cementing or not, technology overriding culture

Following some back and forth on a rather boring theme (unless you're a hardcore techie) about middleware the discussion have shifted to something more useful.

Hugh's latest - Culturalist vs. Technologists - says it:

"There can be no technological solution without a cultural solution. Cultural solutions are more valuable and profitable than technological solutions."

And in the comments Tom Guariello says:

"I think technological solutions without cultural preparedness are Teflon coated. They're too slick and slide off.

Cultural solutions without technological reinforcement are inadequately watered vegetables. They're puny and don't flourish as they should."

Could not agree more.

And then Stephen in the same place:

"I think a major part of the problem is that for people to learn the technology, they basically have to learn how to work within one set of parameters, as the technology is (almost) always the same."

Hear, hear. Technology overriding culture.

Enterprise software (whatever it includes) is boring, but it directly and indirectly runs our lives when we're at work.

Indirectly as it makes the current way-of-doing-things immensely rigid, leaving not much leeway for cultural changes.

And cultural changes to the working environment is upon time. To put it mildly.
How could I otherwise explain the huge readership of Dilbert and the large amounts of "six rules for this" and "seven steps to that" type management handbooks published every year?

Software in general represents / is a model of the real world.
And enterprise software is a bit particular in that it models some other model: Management theories, marketing, hierarchies and a few others. Accounting software is conceptually built for how it's done in the finance department, CRM is built to support the current (and old) ways of the marketing department and so on.

What then if the model the model is based upon is wrong? Would then not the software-cementing-culture be highly unproductive, even inhuman?

Time to revisit the underlying models I say. Let the technology solutions follow.