It seems that every new technology is bound to be regarded with suspicion, often leading to bans and censorship before gradual acceptance sets in. Early adopters could probably learn a few lessons from history and realise that suspicion is an inevitable ingredient of any adoption cycle.

Employees' web access was the subject of discussion a bit more than a decade ago, connectivity having already been put in place to handle email. Suspicions, policies, bans and restrictions ensued. Eventually, the usefulness of instant access to a variety of information sources won out over concerns about the potential distractions offered by websites not relevant to work.

Interestingly, the cycle that starts with suspicion, policies, bans and restrictions typically has two more phases to it: Work-arounds (employees behind firewalls use their mobile devices to access restricted sites with the more technically adept making use of technologies designed to circumvent government censorship) and adoption (the public telephone system spawned private exchanges, the ease with which everybody could access information on internet websites inspired intranets).

A new type of website emerges and the cycle starts again: Suspicion, policies, bans and restrictions. This time it is social networks. Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to discuss social networking both with the BBC's Peter Day (the programme has not yet aired) and in the City of London with members of the Managing Partners' Forum.

The concerns are all too well known: Employees are wasting time on social networking; they are using external sites to connect with colleagues within the firm; relevant knowledge is being generated but doesn't end up in the official knowledge database. Some react with bans (the Forum has surveyed its members and found that some 18% of firms ban all access to Facebook) while others wish for a "Facebook behind the firewall".

When we discuss social networking with clients we typically find that it is not an internal Facebook platform that makes the biggest difference for knowledge workers, it is simple tools for "information networking" - which is social in nature too. Once everybody can publish to the relevant intranet groups, produce their own RSS feeds, share internal and external content and interact with others' content through comments and tags you have globalised the chat around the water cooler. And you are likely to find that it is a chat about... work.