I am asked, occasionally, what Niepokalanow would look like if I built it today. The question is hypothetical, but I find it useful because it forces me to separate the principles from the particular technologies, and the principles are what matter.
At Niepokalanow, we had a printing press, a radio station, and plans for a film studio and an airstrip. These were the most advanced communication technologies available in the 1930s, and we adopted them because they allowed us to reach the most people with the most efficiency.
Today, the equivalent technologies are different. The principles are not.
Here is what I would build.
The Platform
I would build an open-source, community-owned communication platform. Not a social media company. A cooperative.
The platform would be designed for distribution, not engagement. Its success would be measured by the value it delivers to users, not by the time it extracts from them. There would be no advertising. Revenue would come from voluntary contributions, cooperative membership fees, and grants from organizations aligned with the mission.
The platform would be interoperable – designed to communicate with other platforms rather than to trap users within its own ecosystem. The walled garden model, in which platforms grow by making it costly to leave, is the antithesis of what I would build. Our publications at Niepokalanow were not locked behind a subscription wall. They were distributed as widely as possible because the reach was the mission.
The Community
I would build a global community of contributors – not employees, but participants who contribute because they believe in the mission. This is the Niepokalanow model: voluntary participation, shared purpose, collaborative production.
The community would include developers, designers, writers, translators, educators, and organizers. It would operate across borders and languages. It would be governed democratically by its members, with transparent decision-making processes and regular opportunities for members to shape the direction of the project.
The modern open-source movement has proven that this model works. Projects like Linux, Wikipedia, and Mozilla demonstrate that voluntary communities can produce tools of extraordinary quality and reach. What they often lack is the explicitly mission-driven focus that Niepokalanow had. I would add that focus.
The Content
I would produce content in three categories.
Education. Digital literacy, media literacy, critical thinking, and practical skills for navigating the information environment. This content would be free, multilingual, and designed for the communities that most need it – the ones on the wrong side of the digital divide.
Journalism. Community-supported investigative journalism, focused on the stories that corporate media cannot or will not cover. The journalism would be produced by professional reporters, funded by the community, and distributed without restriction.
Tools. Open-source software for communication, collaboration, and community organizing. Designed for accessibility, security, and resilience. Built by the community, for the community, with the explicit goal of serving the people that commercial platforms ignore or exploit.
The Economics
The economics would be the hardest part, and I will not pretend otherwise.
Niepokalanow operated on a model of voluntary labor and subsistence living. The friars did not need salaries because their needs were provided for by the community. This model is not directly transferable to a secular, global project.
But the principles are transferable: shared purpose reduces the cost of coordination. Voluntary contribution, properly supported, produces higher-quality work than compelled labor. And the willingness to accept lower financial returns in exchange for greater mission alignment is not naive – it is the foundation of every sustainable nonprofit, cooperative, and open-source project in the world.
The funding model would be mixed: cooperative membership fees, foundation grants, government support for the educational components, and a modest earned revenue stream from premium services that do not compromise the core mission.
This is not easy. But it is possible. And the alternative – relying on venture capital and advertising revenue, which would immediately create the misalignment of incentives I have spent this entire blog arguing against – is not acceptable.
The Measure
The measure of success would be simple: are we serving the people who need us?
Not: how many users do we have. Not: what is our engagement rate. Not: what is our revenue growth.
Are the communities that lack access to information gaining access through our work? Are the people who cannot afford commercial platforms able to communicate through ours? Are the stories that need to be told being told?
These are the only metrics that matter. Everything else is vanity.
The Invitation
I built Niepokalanow once, with 700 friars and a printing press, and we reached a million people a month.
The tools available today are incomparably more powerful. The potential reach is global. The communities that need to be served are everywhere. And the principles that guided Niepokalanow – service, access, community, generosity – are as relevant now as they were in 1927.
What I would build today is an invitation. Not a product. Not a company. An invitation to build something together that serves the people who need it most, using the most powerful tools available, with the conviction that technology exists to serve humanity and not the other way around.
I am issuing that invitation now. The mission has not changed. The tools have improved. The need is greater than ever.
Build with me.