Zapwriter

“So if you can create an encyclopaedia with a million people who have never met but the quality is just as good as Britannica… what else could you create?”

So goes the central theme behind Ivo Gormley’s new documentary, Us Now, an engaging exploration of where the Internet is heading, and what we, the global community, are achieving as a result. Positing the notion that connection and collaboration is inspiring a more evolved, a more participatory, Information Age, Us Now documents many of the people and technologies driving this change.

Open-source projects like Linux and Wikipedia receive obligatory mentions, but so too do lesser known socially-driven sites; Zopa, a microfinance group that is bankrolled by citizens; Slicethepie, a new kind of record label whereby new bands are found, reviewed, and financed entirely by fans and music lovers; and Ebbsfleet, a football team whose lineup and formation is decided online each week by Ebbsfleet members.

Covered, too, are consequences this paradigm shift is causing traditional businesses and political structures. Ubiquitous connection and user-generated content have helped alter the population’s role from ‘end-user’ to a combination of ‘co-creator-consumer-reviewer’ and this new role has enormous implications for the way in which powerful institutions will have to conduct themselves. Deceit and amoral behaviour is rooted out. Honesty and good practices become paramount – and rewarded.

This ‘collective conscience’ is discussed extensively by experts and eminent businessmen, whose measured confidence in our ability to co-operate for a larger goal should really inspire hope in even the most jaded cynic. As is shown in the film, a site like CouchSurfing.org would never have become successful had it not been for the collaborative efforts of its members. The website that connects backpackers with free accommodation – in fellow participants’ houses – has more than a million users, and is a testimony to the idea of ‘people power’.

Gormley also delves into the idea of self-governance, an idea that on the face of it seems decidedly utopian, but in the context of what the film shows us, reveals itself it to be an attainable goal, if a very distant one.

There is, interestingly, no narration, though the film does not suffer as a result. The widely varying interviews are insightful and educational and stand tall on their own. I recommend it.

(You wont find this documentary in theatres, however you can watch it for free online, or purchase the DVD from their website.)

Sprawled across the living room floor last week was I, plumbing the depths of my worldly social and political knowledge for a subject worthy enough – and page-filling enough – to command attention for a few minutes. My eyes, however, would not co-operate and would soon drag my remaining faculties through televisual mud as I scratched and clawed at a crippling notion; this is cricket and I don’t like it.

Now, had a thought like this materialised in the mind of your average writer, or female, or, let’s face it, anyone born in a country that wasn’t conquered by the Brits, the other half of the brain would nod firmly in agreement and command the fingers to immediately change the channel. It didn’t, however, and I was left tortured by this idea – this contradiction in terms, to my mind – for several days, until a thoroughly engaging conversation with a friend helped my inner sports lover resolve the conflict with my inner intellectual. (Now that I think of it, that can be the topic of next week’s post; Sports Vs Intellectualism – The Road to Peace. Females and non-Brits should feel free to continue reading though, as this isn’t a cricket-lovers column.)

This revelation didn’t centre on whether Twenty20 (the type of cricket in question) was ‘bastardising’ the skills of the game, as is the prevailing opinion of today’s impassioned followers. On the contrary, it seems to me that a game that demands a batsman hastily score as many runs as possible, while requiring the bowler to counter his opponent’s objective with efficient delivery, is, in a way, cricket distilled to its essence. For what is a batsman who cannot score, or a bowler who cannot maintain consistency and outwit his nemesis? It asks the finest players for their best skills and highest concentration, and punishes them immediately for lapses in either.

It even features dance music and cricket-mad (they’d have to be) cheerleaders. So there’s something for everybody, right?

On the other side of the fence, Test Cricket, it could be argued – which I won’t, but could be by someone willing – employs a different tactic in that the batsman is required to knock around a few balls that stray from optimum length, stick the defensive tongue out at the opposing team for a period deemed sufficient by his captain, and at some point said captain announces his delight in his comrades, turns his nose up at the enemy and declares his intention to now switch roles ‘cause he reckons he’ll do a better job at it.

The bowler, unless he’s particularly good at his craft, must deliver most of the  day. Maybe two. This can be, for bowler and couch-riding viewer, irksome. Why, then, does this form of the game strike a chord that Twenty20 does not?

Microphones.

Okay, not just microphones. Microphones on players. From where exactly this auditory concept originated, I haven’t a clue, but it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of extreme possibility by guessing the Chairman of The International Cricket Whatever It’s Called became all excited when, while watching a game of gridiron or rugby league, heard a referee explain his contentious decision via the technological wizardry attached to his striped polo, and thought “By gee, they’ve mic’d the wrong guy.”

Who wants to hear a sportsman talk during the game? Can you possibly imagine a Colosseum gladiator, bleeding and wounded in the heat of battle, suddenly brandishing a megaphone to wax idiotic to the savage audience above him?

“Yeah nah, these lions are a talented bunch, but I’m just taking it one bite at a time. Hang on a minute, here comes one now. Ooh close one.” (Clearly I cannot accurately picture such a scene, as is shown by my Roman warrior’s decidedly ockerish tongue.)

Removing any sense of mystery as to the players’ thoughts is to eliminate a lot of what makes watching a sport – heck, watching anything – worthwhile in the first place. You can only imagine what Captain Courageous is thinking, as his team fights valiantly to stave off defeat/elimination/lions. Will they choke? Are they soiling their undergarments in terror?

Not that it provides much in the way of drama. The inevitable result is Smithy on the field having a chat with Johnno in the commentary box about the state of play, most of which can already be perceived with moderately functional occipital and temporal lobes. Dramatic irony doesn’t seem a good fit on any kind of sporting pitch, and cricket is not, by any way of looking at it, Shakespeare.

Adding to the hilarity is the sight of players who regularly scowl and glare and annoy each other in international competition now smiling and joking with each other on the same team.

“Doesn’t Player X hate Player Y since last year when Y accused X of match-fixing?”

“Yeah but they both signed on for the Mumbai Moneybags for half a squillion dollars and now they’re best mates.”

Far be it from me to argue that the ability to swim laps in hard currency might negatively affect the integrity of a game or its participants, but surely the general concepts behind sporting competition could be left intact? Officials, acting out of some childlike curiosity – “Let’s see what happens when we feed the cat some beer!” – have apparently latched onto the idea that cricket can earn them truckloads of cash, but only if they meddle with the rules, the length, and the definitions of “rivalry”, “tension”, and “shameless”.

I might describe their affinity for exploring the unknown as brave or exciting, were it not for the comical vision inside me of a team of marketing experts, all arch-fingered and pointy-browed, making their next calculated move; a system whereby underperforming players are, via SMS, voted off the turf mid-game.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.