Bitcoin is considered the first DAO. This interview explains it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn_7fdmfZY8&feature=youtu.be...
The DAO is a new type of DAO that instead inflating it's own currency to incentivize humans to do things, it actually is bootstrapped by the people who Create the tokens during the Creation phase.
All DAOs are autonomous. The DAO is run by DAO token holders, they can vote to send money to Proposals.
The idea is that the DAO Token Holders want to make a change in the world, but don't have the time or the plan to do it.
The DAO and it's Proposals are a special type of software called smart contracts. They can be thought of a digital safe that only releases digital currency according to the rules of the Smart contract. The DAO only sends money out when the DAO Token Holders Vote to agree to it and Proposals will have daily/weekly/monthly payment schedules.
Slock.it is hoping that The DAO will choose the Universal Sharing Network to be their flag ship product. We (I work for Slock.it) led the development of The DAO's Code (the [Standard DAO Framework](https://github.com/slockit/DAO) ) so it is specifically designed for the project.
Slock.it will submit a Proposal to The DAO to build the Universal Sharing Network in 2 weeks asking for The DAO to send an amount of digital currency (ETH) to the Smart contract, that ETH will be sent to Slock.it slowly over time and if at any time The DAO doesn't think Slock.it is doing a good job, it can Fire Slock.it and take back the money that is left in the smart contract.
We hope The DAO will be an Ethereum/IoT DAO, and that the DAO Token Holders are excited about that... However we do not know if this will be the case.
This is our [Proposal Overview](http://download.slock.it/public/DAO/Proposal1.pdf)
If you want to learn more about Slock.it's dream to build a Universal Sharing Network, check out this interview: https://youtu.be/Pn_7fdmfZY8?t=4894
If you want to see Christoph walk thru the code for the Sample proposal watch here: https://youtu.be/5BkQ0te_TA0?t=4587