First of all... no professional philosophers on this side... Just stepping inside this Philosophy platform... That said...
For some years already some friends and I have been dealing with a utopia of a smart, just, active, inclusive and still Democratic system for societies based on a few basic rules that could procure a natural balance.
Some argue against Democracy that "masses are never smart" (as most individuals don't KNOW about what are they deciding ON and FOR) and that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (as representatives become powerful and forget). This leads directly to a need of constant, active and proven MERITS based on real areas of expertise where everyone should be involved (including handling representation and power).
Discussions with some people around have led to imagining and writing down some big analysis on how a social system based on merits (and still being democratic) could work. For practical purposes the concept has been mentioned as Meritocracy but the objective is completely opposite to dividing the society, moreover into parts (what Particracy is about, in which some argue we are really living in the Occident, but disguised as Democracy).
The point here is that -the way- some actual concepts deal with huge virtual teams (like OpenSource and precisely StackExchange) are in some ways similar to what we've been imagining: no clear divisions of society, everyone's opinion counts, the experts count more because of their ACTIVE solutions given not because of their brand or reputation (which anyways is transparent, systematically registered as a tool but not idolized). Obviously all this is approaching (through internet) only intangible concepts (knowledge openly exchanged, with space for thoughts and points of view) taking a LOT of care on the RESPECT between individuals (which is valued as core for civilized communications leading to solid teams without barriers). This way, some Internet wonders may have become into a sandbox for the basic rules of how societies could better evolve.
The question is... Are we stepping over on some existing concept of social interaction system that my friends and I are somehow missing (if yes, please answer with a term)? or is this somehow a mix of existing social systems finding some kind of balance between them?
-Something wonderful to complement the answer would be a book, mental map or a site that would graphically present some studied statistics of how a societies deals with the help of this kind of mixed systems.-
Personally I believe technology (specially Internet) is giving the ambiance for such kinds of interactions to be possible, so this way it should be something just lately possible.