''Us Now'' is a 2009 documentary film project "about the power of

mass collaboration Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the internet using social software and computer-s ...

, the government and the Internet". The ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' describes it as a film which "paints a future in which every citizen is connected to the state as easily as to

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

, 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 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

's FourDocs) The project claims the founding principles of mass collaborative projects, including transparency,

self-selection In statistics, self-selection bias arises in any situation in which individuals select themselves into a group, causing a biased sample with nonprobability sampling. It is commonly used to describe situations where the characteristics of the pe ...

and open-participation are nearing mainstream social and political lives. Us Now describes this transition and confronts politicians

George Osborne George Gideon Oliver Osborne (born 23 May 1971) is a British retired politician and newspaper editor who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2016 and as First Secretary of State from 2015 to 2016 in the Cameron government. A ...

and

Ed Miliband Edward Samuel Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since July 2024. He has been Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for D ...

with the possibilities for collaborative government as described by

Don Tapscott Don Tapscott (born June 1, 1947) is a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, who specializes in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society. He is the CEO of the Tapsco ...

and

Clay Shirky Clay Shirky (born 1964) is an American pundit, writer, and consultant on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and journalism. In 2017 he was appointed Vice Provost of Educational Technologies of New York University (NYU), aft ...

amongst others.

Synopsis

The ''Us Now'' website describes the project as an examination of the role of the internet, and more specifically

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, a ...

in facilitating direct public governance without the need for politicians. The film tells the stories of the online mass collaboration projects such as

Mumsnet Mumsnet is a London-based internet forum, created in 2000 by Justine Roberts for discussion among people with child- or teen-aged offspring. History and finances Mumsnet was created in 2000 by Justine Roberts to help parents pool informati ...

CouchSurfing CouchSurfing is a hospitality exchange service by which users can request free short-term homestays or interact with other people who are interested in travel. It is accessible via a website and mobile app. It uses a subscription business model ...

Slice the Pie
and My Football Club whose

self-organising Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when sufficie ...

structures may "threaten to change the fabric of government."

Release and distribution

Us Now premiered at the

Prince Charles Cinema The Prince Charles Cinema (PCC) is a repertory cinema located in Leicester Place, north of Leicester Square in the West End of London. It shows a rotating programme of cult, arthouse, and classic films alongside recent Hollywood releases – ...

in December 2008 and was released in spring '09 for free online viewing. All of the material generated during the project is available to view and download on a

Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bu ...

"and also encourages others to remix the core content with the 20 hours of footage available on the Us Now website (and presumably their own material) to draw other conclusions."
Following release online the film was screened on Channel 4's More4 on 11 July 2009. In late 2009 Us Now was the first film to be distributed on

VODO VODO was an online media distributor offering films, books, games and music under pay-what-you-want pricing models. Founded by film director Jamie King, VODO has recently focused on bundle offers, bringing together a variety of creators under t ...

, a legal torrent distribution website, and received 100,000 downloads in its first five days of being available. The film has been translated and subtitled into 29 languages on the dotSUB platform and has been screened in many locations across the world.

References

External links

Official website
* * *

on Telegraph.co.uk
Ação colaborativa pode mudar forma de gerir o mundo
Estadao newspaper (Brazil) {{Authority control British documentary films 2009 films 2009 documentary films Documentary films about politics Documentary films about the Internet Open government Politics and technology 2000s English-language films 2000s British films English-language documentary films

Synopsis

Release and distribution

See also

References

External links