There has been a change of inflection in references to 'the social', associated with informationalisation. Theories that take account of the way that digital technology has been used to reconfigure social processes highlight a new intrusion of societal demands on private aspects of the self, which has affected our collective capacity to think the future. This is related to neo-liberalism and especially its homogenisation of the subject around a singular rationality, which to an extent has been technologically implemented. The result is a depletion of the 'radical imaginary', which explains the decline of radical, visionary sociology over the last 30-40 years.