Throwing ideas into the air to see where they land, this is a sketch, not a blueprint. A thought experiment. But if we’re serious about rebooting the #openweb for a role in challenging #mainstreaming, and to build alternatives to the failing capitalist status quo, we have to start somewhere. So let’s ask: what does a world built around the #4opens actually look like?
We’re talking about a soft move away from capitalism, not an apocalyptic collapse or utopian leap, but a pragmatic, grounded shift in how we live, relate, and build together in the digital era. A society governed by openness, not profit. A future rooted in collaboration, not control.
- The End of Money as the Primary Motivator
In a #4opens world, exchange is no longer driven by the blunt instrument of money. The logic of scarcity fades when information is abundant and freely shared. With open data and transparent process, value can be tracked, distributed, and balanced – not hoarded.
Imagine a path where you give not to accumulate, but to re-balance. Where you’re recognized and supported for what you contribute, openly. This doesn’t mean the end of value, it means the end of commodification as the only language for it. Capitalism made money sacred. The #4opens world breaks that spell in the digital pats, which can then be used as a powerful lever to re-balance this in the physical world.
- Radical Reductions in Inequality
The current digital economy centralises control in the hands of the #nastyfew, the platform owners, the server landlords, the data hoarders. In contrast, a #4opens world puts common infrastructure – physical and digital – under democratic stewardship.
Open code, open governance, open data, open processes. These tools dismantle the gatekeeping logic of closed silos. We stop renting access to our own lives. We stop working to make the rich richer. What results is not just a redistribution of resources, but a recomposition of power. Rich and poor stop being natural categories. We start down the pat of inequality becoming a historical memory.
- Ecological Transformation via Digital Abundance
In this world, we break the toxic loop where growth = consumption = progress. As digital goods expand – freely shareable, replicable, adaptable – the material basis of economic growth shrinks.
Instead of growth for its own sake, we focus on ecological outcomes. Energy systems localise. Circular economies flourish. The planet breathes again because we’ve stopped mistaking consumerism for culture. Post-consumption, we can meet human needs without destroying the biosphere.
- Real Community, Not Algorithmic Spectacle
When your networks are open, knowable, and modifiable, you stop being a metric or a data point. You become a person in a community again. We build networks of care and trust. The #4opens give us tools to know each other better, to collaborate without permission, and to keep relationships alive across distance and time. We escape the isolation of the #dotcons by remembering what it means to belong, not to brands, but to people.
- Reclaiming the Meaning of ‘Common Sense’
In this transition, we’ll have to rethink almost everything we take for granted. Why do we work so much? Why do we compete instead of collaborate? Why is everything a secret? Why are we trained to distrust?
The capitalist world naturalised its own ideology, it taught us that exploitation was just “how the world works.” The #4opens world undoes this conditioning. We’ll discover that our “common sense” was a prison. Open thinking makes new realities possible.
- Privacy in the Age of the #Dotcons
We already lost privacy. Let’s be honest. The #dotcons and the surveillance state see everything. This isn’t a warning, it’s the present. There’s no going back to closed data. Not legally. Not technically. The dream of sealed-off privacy is gone. So what can we do?
We open the #metadata bag. All of it. We make the hidden flows of power visible. We stop pretending that corporate surveillance is okay while peer-to-peer transparency is dangerous.
Yes, it’s uncomfortable. But in a world where we’ve already been stripped naked by Google, Amazon, and the NSA, radical transparency becomes the preferd path to justice. The question isn’t “how do we hide?” but “how do we share wisely and govern openly?”
- What Does a Post-Capitalist, Open Society Look Like?
It’s not utopia. It’s messy. It’s federated. It’s full of tension and debate. But it’s also a world where:
Decisions are made in the open, not behind closed doors.
Software is built to be forked, not locked.
Platforms are governed by people and communitys, not shareholders.
Care is more valuable than control.
Collaboration is default, not an afterthought.
This is the vision of the #4opens, not a theory, but a practice. A lived, everyday politics. A shift from passive consumption to active creation. It’s the beginning of something new, rooted in #FOSS, everything we already know works if we just trust each other enough to try.
So, what does a #4opens world look like? It looks like the world we’re already building, underneath the rubble of the old one. Time to pick up your shovels.
