Us Now (2009)

Directed by

Ivo Gormley

Genre

documentary film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

59 min

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 7 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A documentary explores how mass collaboration and the internet could change government. It features experts and politicians discussing the shift from symbolic representation to active participation in decision making.

informativethought-provokingoptimisticconversationalforward-lookingreflectiveengaginghopeful

What happens

Us Now is a 2009 documentary film project "about the power of mass collaboration, the government and the Internet". The New York Times describes it as a film which "paints a future in which every citizen is connected to the state as easily as to Facebook, choosing policies, questioning politicians, collaborating with neighbours." The documentary weaves together the perceptions of leading thinkers on the power of the web, with the overriding suggestion that people gain a sense of satisfaction from active participation rather than symbolic representation in decision-making processes. (Rebecca Frankel, editor of Channel 4's FourDocs) The project claims the founding principles of mass collaborative projects, including transparency, self-selection and open-participation are nearing mainstream social and political lives. Us Now describes this transition and confronts politicians George Osborne and Ed Miliband with the possibilities for collaborative government as described by Don Tapscott and Clay Shirky amongst others. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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