One of the most overreaching concerns for our planet is still the disproportionate accumulation of wealth and power amongst a few small networks, an accumulation which only seems to be increasing and causing more and more polarisation in society. We seem to be following the script of an apocalyptic science fiction movie. Of course the roots of this lie in 19th Century Manchester, but we can trace the acceleration back to the regeneration of society in mid-eighties, when Thatcherite and Reaganite policies combined with widespread technological advances in communications. Since then we seem to have failed to imagine the world otherwise, stuck on a single track with no courage to leap. But what if we could find traces in our histories and other cultures, of a different operating system for society and our planet, one that worked for all of us. There have been attempts at this, but do the new technologies of the 21st Century offer an opportunity to bend the world in favour of its citizens?