If a million people that never met can come together online and create an encyclopedia as good or better than Britanica’s, What else can we do?
Can technology enable mass collaboration for legislation and government and do away with lobbyists and corrupt politicians?
A film by IVO GORMLEY and Banyak Films, distributed by VODO and FrostWire.
SYNOPSIS
In his student flat in Colchester, Jack Howe is staring intently into his computer screen. He is picking the team for Ebbsfleet United’s FA Trophy Semi-Final match against Aldershot . Around the world 35,000 other fans are doing the same thing, because together, they own and manage the football club. If distributed networks of people can run complex organisations such as football clubs, what else can they do?
Us Now takes a look at how this type of participation could transform the way that countries are governed. It tells the stories of the online networks whose radical self-organising structures threaten to change the fabric of government forever.
Us Now follows the fate of Ebbsfleet United, a football club owned and run by its fans; Zopa, a bank in which everyone is the manager; and Couch Surfing, a vast online network whose members share their homes
with strangers.
The founding principles of these projects — transparency, self-selection, open participation — are coming closer and closer to the mainstream of our social and political lives. Us Now describes this transition and confronts politicians George Osborne and Ed Milliband with the possibilities for participative government as described by Don Tapscott and Clay Shirky amongst others.
Related Links
US Now – Official Website
An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube
VODO.net
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License
FrostWire Creative Commons graphics attribution
The background image “leader” used on FrostWire’s welcome screen was created by varnent and it’s licensed under Creative Commons