Nowadays the narrative of communication is based on a few, clear, basic concepts: first of all, the great contemporary myth of sharing – resources, ideas, information – and the closely related crowdsourcing, allowing once again the retrieval of resources, ideas, information in a collective and distributed way, straight from the source: from the user, the consumer or citizen (or both) depending on each case.

Like all everyday myths, though, these concepts should be treated with caution and not passively absorbed, but we should try to look at them from different perspectives, searching not only for potential unexpected effects, but also for possible derivations and evolutions.

Thus, it is clear that within an environment ruled by collective intelligence, transparency – seen as the abilty of information to be fully available, both in a functional and interpretative sense, that is accessible and comprehensible – is no longer enough. Namely, it is no longer enough to build a social and civil contract fitting the era of sharing.

Instead, it is necessary to act in order to develop a trusted collective system, distributed and built “from bottom up”; to shift from “engagement” as an individual commitment, to what we could define “crowdtrusting”, the building of a truly participated, horizontal and shared community agreement.

This gives rise to a different vocation of institutions, but also to a new form of responsibility: it is not just about proposing values and principles to society, but enabling people to build them autonomously, with the support of a guaranteeing and never intrusive institution, speaking the same language of its voter: the digital era citizen.