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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

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

by Jessica Dai

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🔒 The Strategies We Need

by Priya Chatwani

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🔒 When the Computer is the Witness

by Christina Tuttle

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🔒 Climate Science Crystal Ball: Towards a Cyborg Climate Science

by Kyle Barnes

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

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🔒 MY GHOSTS REMIND ME OF A WORLD NOT YET MADE

by Raya Ward

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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...

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🔒 Marked as Irrelevant

by Aina Z.

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