Ever wonder where Brave New Films fits in the big picture of new media? You’re here, so you already know what BNF is about (justice), what it makes (online movies), and how it works (video activism: the Web version of grassroots campaigns). But have you ever tried to wrap your mind around the idea that BNF is part of the same new media ecology as Flickr, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Twitter and the open source computer operating system GNU/Linux?
That’s not just some random list of Web sites. They’re all part of a sharing economy; a space that plays by different rules than the marketplace; a messy, labyrinthine networked society where like-minded people can band together and have a kingdom of their own. This place is the commons, and David Bollier tells its story in his new book Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own.