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It’s easy to feel like the future is always arriving.

It’s the age of AI, headlines blare; the age of automation, of surveillance capitalism, of remote work, of distraction. Before that, the age of social media, of the internet, of information overload and big data. We live in a flood of prophecies, the age of ages, drowning in news and takes and things to know.

Why add to this cacophony? In short, because we still have more to say.

Reboot was founded in 2020, and Kernel’s first issue was published in 2021. In these short intervening years, we — the core and founding teams of the first versions of the newsletter and magazine — have collectively graduated, landed jobs, quit jobs, gone back to school, moved across the U.S. and back. We’ve learned to live with Covid-19, seen longstanding publications shutter and resurrect, watched the tech industry go through an entire boom-bust cycle. SUSTAIN is as much about the content of this issue as it is about our decisions to keep going. If in Kernel Issue One we were dreaming something into existence and in Issue Two we were trying to do it right, Issue Three is for building something that lasts.

Continue reading Editor’s Note →

Fiction

Top O’ the World

by Liam Hogan

We make quite the pair. Kenny, a slender six-foot-six giant, a difficult-to-judge thirty-something years old. He’s a Ugandan...

Poetry

Algorithm Minuet

by Dana Chiueh

No Girls on the Internet

by Dana Chiueh

Electrodes

by Taffeta Chime

I picked up a plastic wrapper today

by Spencer Chang

Some things to be

by Alicia Guo

And In My Marrow, The Rungs of Faces Knocking as A Chime Against Pleasure

by Ojo Taiye

Magical Nature

by Ojo Taiye

Ones and Zeroes and Nones

by Ajah Hales

Visual Art

Trace

by Rebecca Mqamelo

Kaixi

by Rebecca Mqamelo

How To Choose a Star

by Alicia Guo

Sweet Incentives

by Frega DiPerri

Organic Envy

by Frega DiPerri

Nonfiction

Headshot of Charles drawn in an illustrative style

Taking Business Personally: A Conversation with Charles Broskoski

by Meghna Rao

Meghna Rao is an editor and writer from Queens, thinking about diaspora and technology. Charles Broskoski is the co-founder...

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Thank You, SBF

by Tony

When my uncle called in May 2021 to ask if I wanted to program for a crypto game called Dark Forest, it was an easy pass. I w...

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Port Paradox

by Anson Yu

On August 28, 2021, Chett Chiasson looked out from his office in Port Fourchon, Louisiana. Since 2010, he has occupied that...

A robot is in the middle surrounded by various mouse cursors clicking on him, stealing variouys parts of his body

“Democracy-Affirming” AI Could Make Things Even Worse

by Kevin Klyman

AI isn’t just being developed in the relatively free societies of the West, it is also being developed by the Communist Party...

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MY GHOSTS REMIND ME OF A WORLD NOT YET MADE

by Raya Ward

I climbed a tree today and let it hold me in my grief. Tangled in its branches, I lay my head down, ear to bark, and listen t...

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The Logic(s) of a Magazine: A Conversation with Michael Falco

by Jessica Dai

Jessica Dai is, among other things, Editor-in-Chief of Kernel Magazine. Michael Falco is Executive Director of Incite at Col...

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The Strategies We Need

by Priya Chatwani

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science during the pandemic, I found what I thought to be my dream job:...

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When the Computer is the Witness

by Christina Tuttle

I spent the summer after my sophomore year of high school bedridden with pneumonia, watching every episode of the crime show...

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Climate Science Crystal Ball: Towards a Cyborg Climate Science

by Kyle Barnes

I’ve been trafficking in data. Petabytes of it: ocean temperatures, atmospheric halocarbon concentrations, Arctic sea ice ext...

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Marked as Irrelevant

by Aina Z.

You’re hitting a wall with your code. It’s getting dark outside, but you have yet to find the solution even after stepping th...

Decision paralysis? Not sure where to start?

Past Issues

Kernel cover for 2021
Issue 2

How do we get there?

Change requires an orchestra of players, instruments, and movements. We cannot achieve this alone. This issue of Kernel Magazine is filled with the people, tools, and ideas that together create movements that drive material change.

People

8 pieces

Tools

12 pieces

Ideas

10 pieces

Kernel cover for 2020
Issue 1

Where do we go from here?

In a landscape dominated by either fatalistic views of technology or by optimism weaponized as hype, Kernel Magazine articulates an alternate vision: a critical analysis of technological progress and regress while still charting a path forward.

Past

3 pieces

Present

7 pieces

Future

5 pieces