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I first discovered afrofuturism during one of my first years of university through the short film _Afronauts_, directed by Nuotama Bodomo; I was still a teenager. I can’t remember if I saw the film first or just a clip in a showreel, but I do remember this image clearly: an afro in an astronaut’s helmet, like a perfect fishbowl. This vision of an imagined future struck me. For the first time, I was seeing myself somewhere I hadn’t even realized was outside of my imagination. But it was just that — a vision. The way the piece looked and felt was the first and only thing that stuck with me; whether or not it _looked_ cool, I _knew_ a Black woman had never been to the moon. At the time, this encounter with afrofuturism as only aesthetic felt disappointing. Aesthetics were only for wishes, for hopes, and never crossed the barrier into reality. I felt that afrofuturism only depicted things that potentially would never be real. (Despite _Afronauts_, there still aren’t any Zambian astronauts.)

The film is inspired by Edward Makuka Nkloso’s attempts at starting a space agency in Zambia during the 1960s. Though he appointed himself as the agency’s head, he was not affiliated with the Zambian government; he was a teacher by trade. Documentary footage that I watched outlined the efforts of the group, clearly mocking what was portrayed as a misguided attempt. It was painful to see Nkloso reach for the stars, only to become a laughing stock. I couldn’t finish watching even a few minutes of footage. I’ve always been drawn to technology and am constantly reminded, including by this documentary, of what a powerful force it can be — and of how people are systematically excluded, undereducated, and denied access to this power. I couldn’t understand why, as an imagined space, afrofuturism didn’t tackle this more.

During university, I became a fan of Janelle Monáe. I loved her depictions of cybergirls being chased through space and dirty computers being coercively deprogrammed. But though I was pulled in by the incredible look and visceral feel of these media, I was still disappointed by the lack of stories to back them. Around this time, I also read Octavia Butler’s _Kindred_ (an impressive book but so full of trauma that I’m not sure I could bear to read again). I read her work as afropessimistic, arguing that the exclusion and permanent othering of Black people can’t be addressed in our world as it currently stands, or possibly at all given the conditions of our world. _Kindred_ was the first piece of Black “science fiction” I read. Science fiction and futurism have fuzzy boundaries for me, and this introduction to Octavia Butler’s work meant that I assumed a lot of the media flown under the afrofuturistic banner reinforced afropessimistic feelings, that we can dream of and create a better future only in our imaginations. Under this theory, nothing can be done in the real world, so we look to our stories. And yet, in some ways, this aligned with how I actually felt about the real world. When I watched _Hidden Figures_, I expected to feel uplifted. Instead, I left the theater feeling crushed, knowing that these Black women had walked the same paths I struggled on in the tech industry, innovated and fought against misogynoir, and barely got recognition within their lifetimes. It was desperately sad.

I would be remiss to omit that afrofuturism is not explicitly about me as a Black British person of Nigerian origin. As an _aesthetic,_ it originated amongst and belongs to African American people. As a _term_, meanwhile, it was coined by Mark Dery, a white man, in a 1993 essay titled _Black to the Future_. This surprised me: a white man coining such an important term in Black aesthetics leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Can a concept coined by an outsider ever truly represent us? Dery begins his essay with a question: “Why do so few African Americans write science fiction, a genre whose close encounters with the Other — the stranger in a strange land — would seem uniquely suited to the concerns of African-American novelists?” A white man posing this question is disingenuous at best. The science fiction canon is famously white and male, as he well knows, and difficult to break into for those who don’t fit the look. Even the Black greats such as Octavia Butler had such a hard time breaking in. It’s difficult to reconcile his naming of the term with its apparent expansiveness now.

I sometimes felt traitorous for my ambivalence about afrofuturism. A non-Black friend told me how terrible they thought Ryan Coogler’s _Black Panther_ was, and I felt viscerally defensive. It wasn’t their place to criticize something that had touched so many Black people. But for me, _Black Panther_ as a film leaves me cold. It presents an interesting springboard and inspiration for children, and some of the portrayals of Wakanda and the technology are visually stunning, but I can’t forgive the opening sequence of a Boko Haram-esque bust being interrupted. I’m always unsure how to square the idea of Wakanda with the reality of the transatlantic slave trade, with hunger and disease from preventable causes in pockets of the continent, with conflict minerals and myriad other issues. I know that fiction doesn’t have to address every possible issue, but the ending of the film paints a strange picture of Wakandan politics that unsettled me. Opening an embassy in the United States as their first gesture towards international outreach was odd, and using the United Nations as a floor to reveal Wakanda to the world was even odder. It paints a picture of a world where many problems don’t exist. It felt like afrofuturistic portrayals always ignored the reality of the world we live in and the material conditions we face as Black people.

> Afrofuturism allows us to see a world where Black people may have their needs and desires met or dashed, but it holds us in focus, us in the center, us as important, loved, cherished.

But my perspective on afrofuturism changed after I soaked up N. K. Jemisin’s _Broken Earth_ trilogy. Her vision of this alternate reality, whilst dark, rendered her characters as fully fledged beings, and many were of color, something missing from earlier science fiction I had consumed. Though their world was grim, they tackled this head-on, controlling their destinies and the fates of those all over their planet, for good and bad. They faced the realities of their circumstances, made horrible but fully informed choices, and took into consideration the broader scope of their actions — everything that the characters in _Black Panther_ didn’t. I wasn’t used to seeing characters like myself — trans, with locs, Black — in fantasy or science fiction novels, and it was a breath of fresh air. My enthusiasm for the genre returned. Janelle Monae’s cybergirls took on more meaning for me after she came out as non-binary, made me feel vindicated in my reading of her android persona, and I let the optimism of her visions encourage me. N. K. Jemisin’s novelette _Emergency Skin_ follows a member of an off-Earth civilisation as he grapples with the discovery that his homeworld is not as idyllic as he was taught. It tackles racism and sexism in its few pages, imagining a future where we all have what we require and live well, because those who were stopping us had finally gotten out of the way.

Another reframing of afrofuturism came from the YouTube creator Andrewism. His videos follow a simple format, a cartoon version of Andrew’s face making a few select expressions, layered with commentary and illustrative images. His videos often take a solarpunk bent, an aesthetic and political view of the future not too far divorced from afrofuturism, and this drew me in further. I learned about anarchism and visions of the now and the future from other Black people fighting for these visions. The realistic optimism and focus on a better future showed me that consuming these kinds of media can help channel people towards better ideas. Andrewism’s channel focuses on the future, illustrating a path to post-ecological justice through a combination of theory, speculation, and potential solutions from both history and the present day. One video tackles ways we can live solarpunk now — by treating wastewater with fishes and pollarding and coppicing trees to maintain forests — wacky solutions that have been proven to work. A different video tackles international anarchist solidarity, and yet another reassures pessimistic environmentalists that humanity is not a parasitic presence on the earth. In his videos, we can imagine a future where people live in conjunction with nature and thrive. People are doing things with these ideas right now, and are creating stories on one hand whilst changing their environment on the other. It’s not a binary choice between imagining or doing. One begets the other.

I began to recognize that we had always been inventing and building and innovating, but our discoveries were crushed into the machinery of a white supremacist and capitalistic culture, obscuring those who didn’t look like the ones in power. This misfocus erases the people who have always existed in the background. They were working towards a better future for themselves and for us all, and getting no recognition for it. Despite this, Black people have always been at the forefront of technology. Even though the film _Hidden Figures_ made me sad, the book and the history behind it connected me to Black people everywhere. They were scientists at a time when it was near impossible for Black people in the United States to thrive, let alone dream up science fiction. Afrofuturistic visions allow us to conjure forth futures where we are recognized for our work, where Black women plot the course to the moon and set foot on it, if they want to. Black history is not Black future, but it informs and nourishes it.

I see now that afrofuturism is a lens in some ways and a portal in others. I see that what I call aesthetics has a heft and power to it that allows us to imagine new futures, to build utopias and to usher in a new world. Aesthetics aren’t the dead end I imagined at all; they are a door to a new world. Afrofuturism allows us to see a world where Black people may have their needs and desires met or dashed, but it holds us in focus, us in the center, us as important, loved, cherished. Janelle Monae’s work may all be works of imagination, not tethered to a real occurrence, but it allows us to imagine ourselves as Black people into these worlds, and to feel that we belong. N. K. Jemisin’s work paints rich internal lives, and fantastic situations large, allowing Black people to see themselves at the center. Andrewism allowed me to see that these works of fiction can give us courage now to build better tomorrows. How we get free, how we ensure the freedoms of others, however they are bound, is central to the works that grab me the most.

> Afrofuturism gives me courage and hope, that the world will improve, and that the world will have people that look, love, talk, and think like me in it.

I recently rewatched _Afronauts_. The end is left open to interpretation; it’s up to the viewer to decide if Matha, the protagonist and astronaut, lands on the moon or is “turned to fireworks,” in the words of her worried mother. The film is a snapshot, a vignette of the Space Race and its avid followers, of its possible consequences for those reaching for the stars and those left behind. It is beautiful. I also now know Octavia Butler did citizen science, often studying slime mold, inspiring many an essay, artist, and scientist in the present day. Their legacies long outlive them.

At its best, afrofuturism allows Black people to feel that the future is as much ours as anyone else’s, and that it is somewhere we belong. Oppression and the freedom from it interweaves itself in all of the works mentioned, and in the afrofuturist project as a whole. It is deeply present and planted in the now, with tendrils reaching through time and space and grasping for a better future. Afrofuturism gives me courage and hope, that the world will improve, and that the world will have people that look, love, talk, and think like me in it. We are all in the future. Though I couldn’t see it at first, all of this has always been true.

_Olu Niyi-Awosusi (they/them) is a web developer and writer living in London. They love Javascript, plantain, web accessibility, exploring ideas, lists and run-on sentences._


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Enrique Rodríguez is a frequent customer of Western Union and MoneyGram, both of which he uses to send cash remittances. At least twice per month, the 69-year-old Guatemalan, now living in New Jersey, transfers money to his wife, children, and grandchildren back in his native country.

“It’s a very reliable process,” he said. “With remittances, you never lose money; my wife receives the money within an hour or two at maximum.”

Rodríguez immigrated to the United States 11 years ago after he realized that the circumstances in Guatemala didn’t allow him to support his family the way he desired.

“I started sending remittances six years ago, and since, I’ve been very proud to be able to help my family from abroad,” he shared. “My wife was even able to buy a car with the amounts I’ve sent her.”

Due to the socioeconomic situation in Guatemala, many adults migrate to the United States out of a desire to open new doors for themselves. Even though Rodríguez was a professional electrician in his country, he was forced to learn other skills to find a job, which is why he now works as a handyman and in construction sites.

Every time he sends out remittances, Rodríguez gets charged a fee of between $4 and $15, depending on the company he uses and the total amount of the transaction. However, he’s not bothered by the fee because the process is efficient.

“I’m extremely grateful for it because I’ve never had any problems with scams or anything.”

---

People from all over the world have been sending remittances in the format Rodríguez has been using for decades. Notably, in Central America, they’ve become an essential source of income for beneficiaries in these countries, and their use has grown exponentially since the 1970s. Now, regional experts suggest that Bitcoin and blockchain technology can potentially replace remittances.

In Guatemala, where I was born and raised, over 80 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty. The average Guatemalan earns less than $3,000 per year and about 21 percent of citizens are illiterate. I thought it made no sense to hear that some suggest that cryptocurrency could succeed cash remittances, which are used mostly by people who come from vulnerable backgrounds and don’t have access to education. So, I set out to learn more about who is promoting the use of blockchain technology for this purpose and how it is being received by users of remittances.

The immigrants who send remittances to Central America have a lot in common — generally, they earn below the median annual household income in the United States, many are undocumented, and their educational level is quite low, most only completing primary school. Despite this, they still send an average of $3,000 annually to their relatives in Central America.

An estimated quarter of the Central American population in the United States is undocumented. A study by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, a think tank focused on Latin America based at the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy, revealed that people with undocumented status send more money than those with a legal residency of some kind. Immigrants who send money home tend to only send what they can afford to spare.

A continued exponential increase in immigration from Central to North America and the persistence of family commitments will increase remittances, data recollected by the Inter-American Development Bank suggests. Analyses suggest that family commitments in the country of origin increase the migrant’s likelihood to send money.

---

The pandemic triggered a historic increase in remittances sent to Latin America. Despite the crisis, remittances increased to unprecedented levels, reaching approximately $128 billion in 2021, its highest level in almost 20 years, and nearly four times higher than expected. Nearly 97 percent of remittances received in Central America are concentrated in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras and are essential to the countries’ GDP. According to a study by the Inter-American Development Bank, beneficiaries from Central America who have received remittances between late 2020 and 2022 showed more significant financial improvement than those households that have not received these flows.

In parallel, Bitcoin has recently been a topic of significant attention and analysis in Central America. El Salvador, for example, made headlines for becoming the first nation to adopt it as a legal tender alongside the US dollar in the fall of 2021. Since then, Guatemala and Honduras have also made efforts towards adoption.

> As Central American countries adopt the use of cryptocurrencies, can it truly be an innovative alternative to remittances? Melder, Mayen, and cryptocurrency optimists suggest it can allow users to avoid paying transaction fees and that it offers a more efficient service that reaches beneficiaries more easily. But is it really a viable option or just a hypothetical idea?

Two people who are influential in leading the Bitcoin movement in Central America at the moment are Patrick Melder and Juan Mayen, who work in Guatemala and Honduras, respectively.

In Guatemala, Melder, an entrepreneur from Houston, Texas, introduced the Bitcoin Lake Project to create a circular economy in a rural community by encouraging locals to “spend and cash out Bitcoin,” he said. Melder’s relationship with Guatemala started in 2012, when he and his family started visiting a local school called “Centro Educativo Josué School” in the country for community service purposes. Since then, he has been teaching all kinds of educational courses to children attending this school. This year, Melder began promoting Bitcoin’s implementation across Panajachel, Guatemala.

“Many of the people and businesses I talk with have families in the United States that send money back,” he said in an interview with me. “[By] using the Bitcoin lightning network, they could receive money from their family members instantly, at any time, with essentially no fees. The fees that Western Union and MoneyGram charge just siphon economic lifeblood from the local economy.”

In Honduras, Mayen, a native of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, pioneered “La Bitconeira,” an initiative to install Bitcoin ATMs across the country.

“The vast majority of Hondurans deal with cash on a daily basis,” he told me. “The idea behind this is that the man who sells food across the street and who has a smartphone, can also have a Bitcoin wallet and withdraw cash that his relatives abroad sent him.”

As Central American countries adopt the use of cryptocurrencies, can it truly be an innovative alternative to remittances? Melder, Mayen, and cryptocurrency optimists suggest it can allow users to avoid paying transaction fees and that it offers a more efficient service that reaches beneficiaries more easily. But is it really a viable option or just a hypothetical idea?

I was determined to find a person who has used Bitcoin instead of remittances, and I must admit that it was extremely difficult to find — very few people are actually using this cryptocurrency in my country. I searched through Facebook groups, Twitter, and contacted the few people I know who use Bitcoin in Guatemala, but I struggled to find someone who used the cryptocurrency to send remittances. After a few weeks, it occurred to me to ask Melder, who suggested I speak to Andrés Guzmán, a businessman with a college degree from Guatemala City who became familiar with cryptocurrency remittances when its implementation began in the country.

"I’m very interested in technology,” Guzmán said, “and I thought, ‘Well, let's give this new thing a chance. What could happen to us if it’s cheaper to send and receive it this way?’”

Considering the costs of sending a transaction another way, he decided to take this alternative.

"I started by sending them a little, because if we lost it, it was not much, but we tried it, and we loved the ease of the Bitcoin network," he said.

Since then, Guzmán said his family has felt more comfortable receiving monetary transactions in this fashion.

“I do see Bitcoin as a feasible option that replaces remittances in Guatemala,” he said. “It’s worth betting on technology.”

On the other hand, María Pérez, a housemaid who was born in a poor community in the outskirts of Guatemala City, has been receiving remittances from her brother, who lives in the United States, for 18 years. She’s satisfied with this procedure because it’s reliable, and she can deposit it directly into her bank account.

“I’m not sure I would switch to the Bitcoin system because it’s something I don’t trust, and the money I receive has been achieved through the efforts of my migrant brother,” she said, reluctant to take the risk of losing the money that her relative abroad has worked hard for.

Pérez isn’t the only one who mistrusts the idea. Manuel Torres, a manager of a restaurant in El Salvador, told me that he noticed locals don’t use Bitcoin because they think it is complicated. Similarly, his compatriot, Elvis Polanco, who owns a store in El Salvador, shared with me that she has noticed that on many occasions, people opt out of using cryptocurrencies for remittances — “not because they don't want to have it, but because they don't know how to use it, and that’s why they’re wary of obtaining Bitcoin.”

> “I’m not sure I would switch to the Bitcoin system because it’s something I don’t trust, and the money I receive has been achieved through the efforts of my migrant brother,” she said, reluctant to take the risk of losing the money that her relative abroad has worked hard for.

Kym Brown, a senior lecturer in the Department of Banking and Finance at Monash University in Australia, said that for the average person from Central America who lives on the poverty line, the main problem with replacing remittances with Bitcoin is that they don’t understand the risks.

“The number one danger of Bitcoin is its high volatility,” she said. “If you have a person earning around $3,000 a year and they have some revenues from someone who sent them Bitcoin, if it drops in value, [the loss can be significant]. These people need to eat. I recommend not to use it.”

Similarly, Jeff Frankel, a professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard University, suggests that cryptocurrencies aren’t well designed to fulfill any of the classic functions of money because they are extraordinarily volatile in price.

“This volatility is not surprising, in that they are backed neither by reserves nor by the reputation of a well-established institution, such as a government or even a private bank or other trusted corporation,” he said.

---

For those who don’t have a bank account or have limited banking services, sending and receiving money doesn’t have to happen via cryptocurrency; a mobile money service like Africa’s M-Pesa can be safe and affordable. Established in 2007, the company allows users to withdraw or deposit in a local currency. By texting the amount they need and afterward meeting with an agent, who acts as a human ATM and works for a bank or a company, people living in several countries across Africa are able to successfully transfer money. Additionally, it doesn’t require the client to own a smartphone, which is expensive — just a regular cell phone that can receive and send text messages.

Andrei Kwok, a senior lecturer in the Department of Management at Monash University in Malaysia, suggested that another alternative is the introduction of digital and financial literacy programs for locals of these developing countries. When understood correctly, using cryptocurrencies might diversify alternative services and improve accessibility for the underbanked.

For example, Melder in Guatemala has already started teaching locals about the subject. His goal is to educate young people on the monetary and technological aspects of Bitcoin at the Centro Educativo Josué School. “I knew that starting with children was the key to teaching the community about new technology,” he said. “That’s why I chose to immediately work with the school and develop a Bitcoin Curriculum that I teach every week.”

His coursework teaches them how to set up a full Bitcoin node and its importance. “And how by doing this, they are part of the largest decentralized, most secure computer network in the world,” he added.

                                                                                   ***

After studying the subject for several months, interviewing experts from different parts of the world, and speaking with Central American residents, I don’t believe that the region is ready to scrap traditional remittances, mainly because they’re a significant part of the economies of these countries. For cryptocurrencies to replace the use of remittances in Central America, it would take many years, and require a lot of enthusiasm from people who want to learn about the subject for this to happen — enthusiasm that isn’t necessarily there.

However, cryptocurrency has ballooned in popularity internationally. It’s not a bad idea to gradually introduce the topic, or to promote educational initiatives. But these courses should be accountable, and rather than solely pushing for adoption, they should be clear about the disadvantages and limitations of cryptocurrency — especially for a vulnerable population for whom volatility and unpredictability mean much more than just a “bear market.”

_Isabella Rolz is a bilingual journalist that covers the Central American region, poverty, and social issues. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Univision, Clarín and other media outlets._


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Scrolling through my TikTok For You Page, aesthetic slice-of-life vlogs, comedy videos, and occasional discourse on social justice issues are interrupted by ads from mental health apps.

With Done, there is no waitlist and you can get an appointment as soon as next week!!

With @BetterHelp you don’t have to go through it alone.

Get mental health care for depression, anxiety, and ADHD online with @getcerebral.

Cerebral, an online mental health startup specializing in prescribing medications, dominates the space for mental health app advertising by far — and social media advertising in general. According to Pathmatics, a digital marketing and analytics company, from January to May 2022, [Cerebral was TikTok’s third largest advertiser](https://www.pathmatics.com/blog/tiktok-top-advertisers-overview), spending $13.3 million on ads and making 1.3 billion impressions. The company also spent $4.7 million on Instagram, where its ads made 581 million impressions.

Cerebral’s ads make use of digitally native advertising tactics, often employing internet lingo and mimicking popular video styles like captions. They involve everyday people talking about their experiences with the service, but even videos with celebrity endorsements — from people such as Simone Biles, who is Cerebral’s Chief Impact Officer — are shot on phones and lightly edited at most. In a video, a man walks as he asks, “Have you ever had a really busy day but you just couldn’t get started? Like, your mind is racing, but you just can’t get out of bed. And you get more anxious by the second.” In the background, you can hear wind rustle into his microphone. He tells viewers, “Look, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not lazy and you’re not dumb. You just have ADHD paralysis.”

At the time I saw this ad, I often had these symptoms but was certain I didn’t have ADHD. I was working a job I didn’t like, and after leaving the job for something more fulfilling, I stopped feeling unmotivated to do anything. I wasn’t alone. As my friends and I graduated into a pandemic and worked tedious entry-level jobs that felt unimportant or like busywork — if we were lucky enough to find work at all — many of us felt unusually down or anxious. It felt inappropriate to hear a stranger in a TikTok ad diagnose me, an unknown viewer with whom he had no connection, with ADHD paralysis based on a symptom that felt so widespread. In _Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope_, Johann Hari cites “Disconnection from Meaningful Work” as one of the causes of depression and anxiety. He notes that “twice as many people hate their jobs as love their jobs,” citing Gallup studies from 2011 and 2012 that found 63 percent of workers were “not engaged” in their work, and an additional 24 percent were “actively disengaged.” The pandemic has worsened America’s mental health crisis, with 41.5 percent of adults reporting recent symptoms of anxiety or depression, up from [36.4 percent](https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/mental-health-america-crisis), and the proportion of mental-health related emergency room visits for adolescents increasing by[ 66 percent](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945a3.htm).

Mental health apps purport to solve these problems, promising to increase accessibility to mental health treatment by lowering wait times and improving affordability and convenience. [A report from Deloitte](https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/technology-media-and-telecom-predictions/2022/mental-health-app-market.html) suggests that there may have been up to 20,000 mental health apps in 2021. That year, mental health apps raised $5.1 billion in funding, up from $2.7 billion in 2020 and $1 billion in 2019. Startups focusing on mental health nearly doubled the amount they received in 2020 and received $3.3 billion more than other digital health ventures, such as ones focusing on diabetes or primary care, [in 2021](https://rockhealth.com/insights/2021-year-end-digital-health-funding-seismic-shifts-beneath-the-surface/). The outcomes from mental health apps are often reported by the apps themselves to investors, tracking profitability and impact as metrics, which influence how much funding goes into the apps.

The technological approach to mental health, which often relies on “data,” perpetuates an emphasis on quantitative results and streamlined processes. A press release reads:

“Cerebral’s success stems from its hyper-focus on quality and efficiency. Spearheading longitudinal data collection in behavioral health, the platform tracks clinically proven symptom-based ratings on a monthly basis as well as client-reported satisfaction. Its ability to collect and leverage data enables Cerebral to overcome one of the biggest challenges in mental healthcare today: lack of visibility into quality and outcomes.”

This “hyper-focus on quality and efficiency” has been accelerated in healthcare more generally by technology. During the Industrial Revolution, the assembly line sped up manufacturing processes and boosted factory output. Rather than workers being present at each step of creating a product, which often required more expertise, they could now focus on a specific, repetitive task. Within the healthcare field, this phenomenon, called _task-shifting_, has also become more common. Rather than professionals with higher qualifications performing all aspects of medical care, some tasks are shifted to lower-paying roles that require fewer qualifications. The division of medicine has led to tasks being siloed to keep costs down; psychiatrists focus on tasks that require MDs, like prescribing medicine, while social workers and clinical psychologists deliver therapy. Technology can aid task-shifting, standardizing the performance of certain tasks and allowing tasks to be performed by technical assistants. There have even been apps created to work without human intervention, like WoeBot, which lets users perform cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT), and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) on themselves.

The [World Medical Association’s resolution](https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-resolution-on-task-shifting-from-the-medical-profession/) on task-shifting notes that while task-shifting can improve medical care in areas with physician shortages, it also has the potential to decrease the quality of care through reduced patient-physician contact and fragmented service. This can lead to increased risks of incorrect diagnosis and treatment and fewer patient follow-ups. The philosophies behind technology, which often focus on scale and consistency, amplify issues seen within task-shifting but are often fundamental to business models and profitability. In fact, since many of these startups exist primarily to make a profit, they cut corners when attempting to scale business models. Within the realm of telehealth therapy, this means less investment in training qualified therapists and patients not receiving the help they need. BetterHelp’s 2018 terms of service note that they are not responsible for verifying the qualifications of any of the app’s counselors; instead, “it is your responsibility to conduct independent verification regarding any Counselor that provides you with Counselor Services.”

For telehealth prescription management, profit models can incentivize clinicians to overprescribe addictive medications — so much so that some major pharmacies [no longer fulfill prescriptions](https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-cvs-pharmacies-have-blocked-or-delayed-telehealth-adderall-prescriptions-11651082131) from specific telehealth startups. “Adderall can be a potentially addictive substance,” said Dr. Sulman Aziz Mirza, a psychiatrist specializing in adult psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, and addiction medicine. “You push something out there that you know you're going to get a result from, and they're going to need even more of it and they're going to keep coming back.” The Department of Justice is currently investigating Cerebral for violating the Controlled Substances Act for overprescribing stimulants, and many employees, including a former Cerebral executive, have spoken out [about being pushed to prescribe medicine at the expense of patient safety](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-03-11/cerebral-app-over-prescribed-adhd-meds-ex-employees-say). This is especially concerning as many mental health apps target adolescents and exploit users’ trust and lack of alternatives, leading to both overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis.

Online discourse on mental health, which tends to flatten complex narratives, has ballooned in a wormhole of pandemic-induced doomscrolling. In the blog _[I learnt I had ADHD from TikTok](https://fashionjournal.com.au/life/adhd-tiktok-trend/)_, Dasha Romanowski writes that before consuming TikTok discourse on ADHD, she felt restlessness from working in an office all day and attributed it to laziness: “I accepted that this must be what adult life is, this constant, inescapable sense of drowning, and that I was just being lazy.” But, through “[consuming] TikToks about ADHD in women,” she learns that ADHD is associated with behaviors like “finishing people’s sentences and having to set at least ten alarms to wake up.” Cerebral’s TikTok advertisements parrot user-generated content with their solutions to these common behaviors: _Look, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not lazy and you’re not dumb. You just have ADHD paralysis_. Like in the TikTok discourse videos, these mental health startups often adopt reductive narratives and treatment models of mental health care that don’t account for the interplay of social circumstances. Instead, patients are often immediately prescribed medicines, making them even more dependent on the services.

> Like in the TikTok discourse videos, these mental health startups often adopt reductive narratives and treatment models of mental health care that don’t account for the interplay of social circumstances.

Since 1997, [drug companies have spent billions of dollars annually on advertisements for individualistic solutions to mental illness](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2690298/). These ads tend to elide situational and environmental factors that also contribute to mental illness. For example, discourse on mental health often ignores systemic causes like economic instability or racial violence. Unhoused people are twice as likely to have mental health issues than the general population; 47 percent of homeless women — twice the general population — are likely to have major depressive disorder. [Poverty is highly correlated with mental illness](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/10/30/499777541/can-poverty-lead-to-mental-illness). [Black and minority ethnic](https://raceequalityfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/mental-health-report-v5-2.pdf) communities have higher rates of mental health issues.

It’s hard to not be depressed if you’re experiencing something like financial insecurity or systemic racism, or even mundane situations like working a bullshit job. Modern life is riddled with challenges. The Centers for Disease Control estimated in 2011 that almost a quarter of Americans suffer from a mental illness, and that half of all U.S. adults will have a mental illness in their lifetime. The “chemical imbalance” theory of mental health, which hypothesizes that depression is caused by having too few or too many neurotransmitters, focuses on individuals and has long been debunked as the only cause of mental illness. This isn’t to say antidepressants and other medications don’t work. But if we want to accomplish anything beyond alleviating mental illness in individual people, we must tackle it on a larger scale. Today, [most psychiatrists follow a bio-psycho-social model of mental illness](https://mentalhellth.xyz/p/even-psychiatrists-hate-the-chemical), which attributes mental illness to a mix of biology and social and psychological factors. However, due to financial incentives, few psychiatrists offer therapy or forms of treatment other than prescription medicines.

Medicalization has become a trend across the United States, despite most people preferring alternatives. This is often because alternatives are costly and inaccessible and people tend to receive mental health treatment — usually in the form of prescription medicine — through community and primary care doctors. Demand for therapy has outpaced supply. Nearly one in three clinicians said that it could take at least three months to get an appointment or that they didn’t have room for new patients. In rural areas, access is even more difficult — [80 percent of rural counties in the US do not have a single psychiatrist](https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/press-release/new-study-shows-60-percent-of-u-s-counties-without-a-single-psychiatrist/).

The toll of mental health apps existing within a system where they need to prove their profitability to survive makes mental health treatment worse for everyone. It means therapists are juggling many patients at once and working within a model of gig labor, sometimes getting paid based on words sent and read via text messages, [as BetterHelp does](https://www.mytherapist.com/advice/general/how-much-does-betterhelp-pay-counselors/). It means advertising that often preys on adolescents, like [Cerebral suggesting unhealthy eating is a symptom of ADHD](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/instagram-tiktok-cerebral-startup-ads-pulled-rcna13476). It means violating user trust, such as [Crisis Text Line selling data to their for-profit spinoff to train AI customer service software](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/28/suicide-hotline-silicon-valley-privacy-debates-00002617) without their users knowing. This problem isn’t unique to technology, though the tech industry exacerbates it through scale and emphasizes an individualistic perspective of treatment. Solutions that follow the bio-psycho-social model of mental illness require more thoughtfulness, and won’t generate profit as efficiently as quick fixes involving technology, like medicalization.

> But rather than relying on tech companies to save us individually, we need to fix the systems that lead to these problems in the first place.

These apps have no doubt helped some patients. One comment on a BetterHelp ad reads, “The only reason I use it is because I don’t have any other way to get therapy.” But rather than relying on tech companies to save us individually, we need to fix the systems that lead to these problems in the first place. Healthcare solutions should not aim to profit from broken systems at the expense of adolescents who may stumble upon sinister ads. We need to think about the alternatives that exist beyond flashy new apps, efficiency, and profit models. We need to look for alternatives that don’t just mitigate, but actually get to the root of our problems and challenge the oppressive systems of power that make us all more miserable.

_Lily Lou (she/hers) is a front end developer for Rest of World based in Brooklyn, New York. She enjoys joining book clubs and sometimes writes._

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The next 30 years mark a unique period in humanity’s timeline. Actions we take between now and 2050 will decide the fate of billions of human beings. By 2050, we will know if we made the right decisions in the decades prior. We will have either set humanity on the correct trajectory to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, redistribute wealth, deliver justice, protect our ecosystems, and build prosperity for all lifeforms on our planet, or we will have caused ecological damage and immeasurable suffering for people and wildlife all around our world.

2020 was a warning sign from an undesirable future. While lockdowns caused global CO2 emissions to fall by 6.4 percent and granted a pyrrhic victory to the climate, the win was short lived. [According to Jeff Tollefson in Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3), by the latter half of 2020, emissions bounced back, and as the world wakes up from the hazy dream of COVID-19, emissions are rising to levels seen in prior years.

Continuing to emit greenhouse gasses at this level is untenable. Massive droughts, wildfires, and record high temperatures are affecting all seven continents. Not so long ago, these same “natural” disasters would have been viewed as once-in-a-lifetime events, but as heat waves roast Western Europe and the United States, we are learning that global warming does not care about borders.

Every choice we make is an opportunity to begin a journey towards a different future, where the resources for humanity’s nourishment and the health of our planet are abundant. Getting there, however, will require an immense transformation of the world as we know it.

## Dematerialistic Illusions

Starting in the 1970s, the Digital Revolution enabled the widespread use of computers and access to the internet. By the 1990s, the Commodore 64 and other personal computers had found their way into millions of offices and homes across industrialized nations.

That same period marked the rise of “dematerialization,” or the ability to produce more with less physical input. Computing and the digitalization of various parts of the economy made the effect seem larger than it actually was. _Imagine this! Soon all media and most services will become bits on a computer_, preached techno-utopians around the world. _Everything will be cheap and available to anyone with a computer._

This seemingly naive viewpoint actually has roots in empirical data. In the U.S., the consumption of non-renewable resources like copper and steel had decreased as GDP continued to rise. As researchers like Andrew McAfee point out, [burning coal and gas has gotten more efficient in the past decades](https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/environmental-impacts-natural-gas), resulting in less emissions for the same amount of energy.

Nor is it a stretch of imagination to see how digital technologies would lead to dematerialization. Consider the advent of streaming movies and electronic books. Rather than use fossil fuels to supply the energy for the production and delivery of these services, we could now use renewable electricity to deliver them.

Must it not follow that digital services would reduce waste and use less energy?

## The Jevons Paradox and the Lifecycle Analysis of Emissions

In 1865, economist William Stanley Jevons observed a phenomenon that would plague the 20th and 21st centuries. Shortly after the invention of the steam engine, a machine intended to make coal more efficient, [coal consumption counterintuitively increased](https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/jevons-the-coal-question). Rather than doing the _same_ with _less_, industry learned to do _more_ with _more_.

> Rather than doing the _same_ with _less_, industry learned to do _more_ with _more_.

The Digital Revolution suffered a similar fate. Despite optimism in digital technologies to reduce emissions and make the world more efficient, greenhouse gasses and material consumption continued to rise. Techno-utopians made two oversights when envisioning a material-free (or at least, material-minimal) future.

The first was the specter of the Jevons Paradox. Widespread computing did not create a world in which Netflix replaced AMC or Amazon replaced Barnes and Noble. Instead, it created a world where people stream more movies _and_ go to theaters, own both personal libraries _and_ Kindles. Echoing the same observation made by Jevons in the 1860s, increased efficiency did not lead to a decrease in net consumption — it only made _more_ consumption possible by _more_ people.

The second critical oversight was forgetting the many sources of emissions of digital technologies, which includes manufacturing and disposal. Computer manufacturing takes place all over the world. Oils for plastics are piped from the Middle East, lithium for batteries are mined in Chile, raw materials then are shipped to China to be processed and assembled, and the final product is flown back to the U.S. to be sold and placed in the hands of consumers.

Every step in this process generates emissions, and increasingly sophisticated manufacturing techniques for more powerful devices push emissions higher. In _Patterns_, [Freitag et al.](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100340) find that manufacturing, on average, accounts for 50 percent of the emissions generated for a personal computing device, depending on its lifespan before its disposal.

These observations conflict with the “green” vision that techno-utopians and modern economists had for digital services. Digital services can only significantly lower the emissions for a given activity if they replace the physical activity entirely. This means a world where Zoom calls replace most flights, and not a world where there are Zoom calls _and_ flights.

## Outrunning the Rebound Effect

Despite all the ways that digital devices produce emissions, their direct overall contribution to global warming is shockingly small. Freitag et al. find in the same _[Patterns study](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100340)_ that in 2020, digital technologies accounted for an estimated 2.1 to 3.9 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. This figure roughly captures the emissions generated by the manufacturing, use, and disposal of servers, personal computers, and smartphones.

This emissions figure is contrasted by digital technologies’ social and economic influence. For example, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have a [combined market cap of over $5 trillion](https://companiesmarketcap.com/). Big tech companies facilitate a vast amount of economic and social activity, yet surprisingly, their emissions remain relatively minor.

One explanation lies in the extraordinary energy efficiency gains seen in data centers over the last decade. [According to the International Telecommunication Union](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx), between the years 2010 to 2018, the number of individuals connected to the internet nearly doubled. This has led to data center workloads increasing sixfold, internet traffic increasing tenfold, and data center storage capacity increasing 25-fold. Yet, [analysis published in Science by Masanet et al.](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba3758) showed that the electricity usage of data centers increased by only 6 percent.

At least for data centers, it seems that a true decoupling between material inputs and useful outputs has manifested. Research and engineering continue to improve compute, cooling, and energy efficiencies, with the ultimate effect of providing more with less. These efficiency gains can hold out for a few more years, as millions more become connected to the internet.

Another explanation for digital technologies’ small emissions footprint is the industry’s heavy investments in renewables. According to [Google’s 2022 Environmental Report](https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/google-2022-environmental-report.pdf), since 2017, the company has purchased enough renewable electricity sources to match the amount of electricity it uses during its operations. Similarly, several big tech companies have banded together to invest [$925 million in carbon capture technologies](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/04/big-tech-investment-carbon-removal/629545/), the largest investment of its kind to date. Depending on how carbon accounting is done, these investments and purchases can push the emissions generated by tech companies downward.

Digital industries have managed to narrowly avoid the Jevons Paradox in the 21st century. By combining R&D, carbon offset purchases, and renewable investments, tech companies can continue to grow, increasing the amount of computing devices and services provided in the world, while reining in their emissions…

… Or not. What this analysis lacks is a hard look at how these technologies impact external industries. How can we think about the emissions that are enabled by digital technologies, but not directly caused by them?

## Technology is Not (Carbon) Neutral

In May 2020, Greenpeace published [a report](https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/oil-in-the-cloud) documenting the ways in which cloud computing service providers such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have aided fossil fuel companies. The use cases vary from making the transportation of oil more efficient to building out machine learning models based on seismic data to find new oil sources. The consequences were all the same — oil was easier to pull out of the ground.

This is not the only example of how tech influences industry and consumer behavior in harmful ways for the environment. For example, booking flights became dramatically easier due to software improvements, causing a subsequent increase in emissions generated by the aviation industry.

We cannot entirely scapegoat software for the aviation industry’s emissions — airlines and airplane manufacturers must ultimately reduce flights or find ways to make flights more environmentally friendly. But it seems naive to ignore the role that digital technologies play in enabling these emissions.

Our understanding of how technology companies have shifted consumer and industry behavior is still quite small relative to its true scope and scale of transformation. Only recently has some of the data been made public to understand how technologies like social media and smartphones have impacted human behavior. Similarly, researchers and politicians have only recently begun holding technology companies accountable for the harms they have caused to our social and political systems.

Just as we attempt to hold tech companies accountable for social and political harm, we must also hold them accountable for the ecological degradation they enable. We cannot let companies like Google make promises to reach net-zero emissions by 2030 while still holding contracts with fossil fuel companies. We must reconcile the improvements that digital technologies bring with the equally real destruction that they can cause.

## Beyond Digital Greenwashing

Our current economic and political systems incentivize the production and use of fossil fuels. Cheap, abundant, easily transportable energy has been the lifeblood of the 20th and 21st century. Governments dole out land permits to drill for oil, provide subsidies for natural gas, and are hesitant to buck the status quo. How can we guide industry leaders and politicians towards investing into renewables, research, and resilient infrastructure?

Part of the answer lies in digital technologies. While the power of computation can supercharge resource extraction, the reverse is also true. Computation can help preserve the Earth and reduce resource consumption. For example, satellite imagery combined with computer vision has [helped identify illegal fishing operations](https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2022/06/08/2458326/0/en/Emerging-technology-gives-first-ever-global-view-of-hidden-vessels.html) harming ecosystems. Machine learning models can [increase the efficiency](https://www.deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-centre-cooling-bill-by-40) of heating and cooling data centers. The key here is to align technology with missions and goals that seek conservation and sustainability, instead of narrow-minded growth.

We can also borrow from Silicon Valley’s playbook. Venture capital firms and Big Tech companies invest heavily in sustainability startups, many of which are attempting to scale experimental technology. As with all startups, many are expected to fail. But only a handful of them need to succeed to have a meaningful impact on emissions.

These investments signal that there is a growing appetite for combating climate change. In [a story from _The Atlantic_](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/04/big-tech-investment-carbon-removal/629545/), Nan Ransohoff, the Head of Climate at Stripe, says, “We are trying to buy ourselves time to get the right policy mechanisms in place to take this market where it needs to go.” Maybe, just maybe, tech companies and VC firms leading the way in these renewable investments and experimental technologies can give governments and politicians the push they need to follow suit.

The appetite for sustainability work is large and growing in the tech space. Employees and organizations see the value in rapidly reaching net-zero emissions and finding ways to accelerate net-zero efforts across other industries. The next step, with which tech is ever-so-familiar, is scaling up these projects to deal with the grand scope of emissions.

## Beyond Techno Fixes

The emissions figure for the digital tech industry paints a picture that is both hopeful and grim. Despite the industry’s massive influence on commerce and society, it has managed to keep its direct emissions relatively small. Freitag et al. estimates annual emissions to be around 2.3 gigatons of CO2 and the [IPCC WG3 report](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_SPM.pdf) estimates that solar and wind energy alone could reduce emissions by two to four gigatons of CO2 by 2030, as the industry strives towards net-zero emissions. Given that tech companies are at the forefront of investing in renewable energy and experimental carbon capture technologies, I am hopeful for a net-zero world for our digital infrastructure.

At the same time, this means that even if the tech industry solves the issue of emissions internally, those changes will be nowhere near enough to prevent a climate catastrophe. The other 96 percent of greenhouse gas emissions comes directly from industries such as agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. And as much as digital technologies may make these industries more efficient, it is unlikely to be enough to completely draw emissions down to net-zero.

> What we need is a Sustainability Revolution — a revolution that changes the core values in our political, economic, and cultural systems to protect the shared wealth of our natural commons.

The [Exponential Roadmap Initiative](https://exponentialroadmap.org/), an organization supported by European politicians, CEOs and the United Nations, calls for using “exponential technologies [to] help dramatically reduce energy, material, and waste.” But we know that this cannot be the only change. The past few decades alone show us that efficiency gains typically lead to more net consumption, not less.

What we need is a Sustainability Revolution — a revolution that changes the core values in our political, economic, and cultural systems to protect the shared wealth of our natural commons.

Writers and activists like Naomi Klein and George Monbiot have spoken at length at what this new system may look like. It could be a world where our energy grid is solar-powered, distributed, and cooperatively owned, where open-sourced software and hardware help manage the system’s complexity without centralizing power and wealth. A world filled with public luxury, in the form of gorgeous parks, theaters, and infrastructure, and where everyone would be satisfied with [private sufficiency](https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/private-sufficiency-public-luxury-land-is-the-key-to-the-transformation-of-society/).1 Whatever form this new system takes, at its core it will value sufficiency, longevity, and sustainability.

## We Build the Future

Digital technologies have given the gifts of connection and education to humanity, while requiring relatively few material inputs. But just as a teenager must mature, so too must the tech industry grow wiser and more responsible for its actions. It must consider not only the impact it has now, but the impact it will have for generations to come. No longer can they avoid accountability under the guise of trying to create radical abundance in an always almost-here future.

Digital technologies have inherited the practices of previous industrial revolutions: exploit labor, concentrate power, and ignore externalities. Centuries of experience have taught us that this is not a sustainable mode of operation. Even in the digital realm, we cannot escape the fact that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.

Though the window to change our emissions trajectory is rapidly closing, it remains open. We must build a future that acknowledges planetary limits. It is time for us to seize this moment.

1 George Monbiot gave a talk in October 2020 where he coined the phrase “private sufficiency, public luxury.” He describes how unjust and unequal property rights has created a world that protects the ultra-wealthy and frames poverty as a personal failing. Monbiot goes on to argue that individuals embedded in Western cultures need to stop seeing themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires,” and instead fight for systems that create a floor for quality of life that no one should fall below.

_Tommy Bui Nguyen (he/him) is a software engineer based in Chicago, IL. When he's not at his desk writing code, you'll find him outside running, bouldering, or enjoying a cup of coffee and a book._

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They aim to build the metaverse, these bright-skinned white-teethed boys. They
 talk breathlessly of frictionlessness, and I think about your skin against
 mine, swallow. They carefully enunciate the t in community, and I
 wonder if they would take my hand if I asked, and march until
 morning comes, dew-stained cheeks and spent lungs. They
 dream of a future free of flesh and history. I know that
 these weights give me form. Am I flawed, that I do not
 wish to be god, formless light fed through wire?
 All I pray for in the next world is that you
 are beside me when I wake, to have tea to
 brew even if I forgot to prepare for the
 apocalypse properly. I was too
 busy watching you move the
 air around you. If you gods
 can simulate this light
 at the base of
 my spine
 call it
 genesis.

_Jasmine Wang is a writer and technologist, searching for a home near some ocean for her grand piano. She is based in the cloud._

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Aja watched the island float for just a single heartbeat, and then it sank. Like the others before it, reeds and grasses swallowed in greed, by the waters of the bog. Beside her Diana heaved a sigh of frustration.

“We’ll try again,” Aja said, but Diana was already shaking her head.

“If it hasn’t worked yet, it won’t work at all.”

“That’s not helpful!” Aja resisted the urge to kick the planks they had stacked by the wayside. They would need them to build another island. Diana bared her teeth.

“Well, what else do you want to do? Wasn’t there someone who once said doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is madness?”

“But we’ve been trying new things! We’ve been…” Exhaustion crashed over her mid-sentence, and Aja trailed off, shoulders slumping. It was noon; they had gotten up so early to set up the last bits and pieces before getting the floating garden in the water. This was their fifty-ninth attempt, or maybe the sixtieth. In her tired mind the numbers blurred together, the times she’d ended up in the mucky waters bleeding into each other. These days she was always damp, always accompanied by the smell of the bog, no matter how much she washed it off.

“We’ve been trying,” she repeated, voice faint.

Diana’s jaw was clenched, but she, too, was swallowing back her anger. “I know. But we have to start considering other options. I heard Norway is building actual ships that…”

“Won’t work,” Aja interrupted her, uncaring of how rude it was. Diana should know better; this had been her idea, after all. “The bogs don’t have the same depth necessary for a ship or boat big enough for both people to walk around and gardens big enough to be useful. The boats would be too big, and we can’t move them enough.” It would be easier if the ground was stable, if landmasses hadn’t fallen into the ocean. A hungry mouth, Diana had called it, when the southern shore of Greenland had been eaten up, all in one go. The ocean was hungry, and she was swallowing the lands incessantly, could not get her fill. She was tired, Aja thought, tired of being filled with trash and tears and oxygen-crushed corpses of whales down on the bottom.

“We have two weeks until the deadline,” Diana said. “Do you really think we’re going to come up with something in that time? They’re going to take our funding. They’re going to decry the whole project, say floating gardens would have never worked anyway. We should have focused on new landmasses, on draining the water or making artificial soil or _anything_. But floating gardens? Might as well be flying gardens, for all the good it’s going to do. No one will ever pick it up again, no one will ever listen to us…”

“Quiet!” Aja hissed, and that was it, Diana was turning around and storming away, each of them reaching their breaking point. Once, such arguments had been rare between them, but stress and isolation had picked at their brains until all that was left was raw exposed nerves. The heat didn’t help, making them sluggish and slow. The sun left a red tinge on the dark skin of Diana's left shoulder, a red deepening with the afternoon. In their hurry, they had forgotten to be careful. They had stopped caring about it, out here all alone.

It was illegal to work during the noon-hours now; everyone was required to stay inside with their shutters closed. Aja remembered laughing the first time a friend had told her that UV-rays traveled through the thick panes of her window, that sitting there in the sun, directly or not, would harm her. That was when she had been young, when the ocean had seemed inevitable but somehow not quite as threatening, when the sun had still been a friend. And she remembered the first time she’d broken curfew to set up tomatoes on their second attempt at the island, and she had stayed out long enough that the skin beneath her work coverall and sleeveless tank had gone red, too.

“I’ve tanned through my clothes,” she’d told Diana, and Di had laughed and then grown quiet when she had seen the light brown just on the edge of still being red. It had hurt, the skin peeling off like those summers when she was a child and had been out just ten minutes longer than the sunblock would work for. Her mother had scolded her back then, voice harsh, speaking of cancer and cells breaking down. When it happened out in the bog, years later, Diana did not scold her. They both knew they would break curfew again to make this work, no matter how much it burned.

In the privacy of her mind, Aja tried to blame the bog. The sun reflected off the water, no matter how murky, and intensified it. This damned bog that they had made their home now, supposedly teeming with life it could hold onto like no other waters. While the ocean swallowed everything, the bog seemed quiet, content instead. Diana had put her faith in its stillness and Aja had put her faith in her wife.

The floating gardens had been Diana’s idea, presented to her the first time they met in a café in Copenhagen. She sketched out crude designs on a napkin, talking a mile a minute, and Aja had not felt the need to interrupt though she knew she should be perturbed at not getting a word in edgewise. _I know about this stuff too_, she could have said, but Diana’s enthusiasm was infectious, her need to speak coming from a teacher’s, not a braggart’s, heart. She left the napkin behind on the table when she realized she’d been late for her train, and Aja almost threw it out. She spilled the last bit of her coffee on the table and reached for the napkin to clean the mess. And then she saw the number scrawled there, alongside a name and a promise.

Their calls had been few, their texts short, but two years later they met again at a conference in Madurai, and Aja had it ready, the plans sketched out properly with an architect’s eye to aid the ecologist. When she presented them she had thought for a moment that Diana would kiss her, right then and there, in front of everyone else at the conference, but she kept it in and waited until after the panels, after the halls had emptied, after their dinner date was over. Aja remembered, even now, how she thought of sunshine when Diana kissed her. Back then, sunshine had still been a good thing to her. Back then, this project seemed achievable.

“The old Aztecs did it,” Diana used to say, almost like a holy mantra. “And others, too. So why can’t we make it work?”

She hadn’t said that in over a month, Aja realized, as she stood there staring at the now still waters of the bog. The soil would dissolve into it, the weeds used as props for proper vegetables collected once they floated to the surface. If it had worked, the island-garden would have been a slim but long thing, with modular sections for added portability. It could be transported through any relatively calm waters and arrive at the farmers now needing to move and relocate every five years or so, as the earth beneath them changed or disappeared at a rapid pace. Similar systems had been set up in Venice already, designed for their once-canals, now-rivers. But Diana’s designs, Diana’s idea, were different. It depended on the bog’s ability to be a natural freezer and preserver, and on the bog’s own need for decayed plant material. It would be a give-and-take if this worked: the bog would feed the gardens and the gardens would feed the bog. Move them, install new ones, plant what you wished. Use what little land was left to keep the greediest parts of the sea away — dirt was no longer needed to grow crops. They had the bog. Diana claimed that with the proper tools, they could grow anything on these gardens, though Aja thought the islands would need to be larger to accommodate proper trees or even very big pumpkins.

But a floating garden was one thing; making it harmonious with the natural environment of the bog was another — not to mention getting it to move without destroying its tiny ecosystem or, quite plainly, having the whole thing break apart. People had been skeptical from the beginning and getting funding had taken years. When Aja and Diana finally had it, it was only the two of them in a bog for two years and Tala, an intern who came in every Wednesday and Friday. Tala had been a blessing at least; she often stayed the weekend over, leaving early Sunday morning and breaking curfew alongside them during Saturday noon-hours to work outside, building and measuring, planting and testing. At some point, Aja stopped being able to follow the scientific jargon, and she let Tala and Diana lead the way, helping where she could, following directions where she couldn’t. She gained more muscle than she knew she could, hauling planks and reeds, digging and pushing, planting and carving. She could pick Diana up by the waist and swing her around now, whooping in joy while Di protested and blushed, and held tight to her shoulders, held tight around her neck.

It had been two years of hard work, and now it would be taken from them. It wouldn’t be wasted, Aja refused to believe that; if nothing else, Diana had discovered better ways of transplanting roots through minimal space, of making beets and zucchini grow where it shouldn’t have room to at all. She published a short piece about it last year, one that had received a lot of attention, but Aja knew it mattered little to Diana. Not in the face of her bigger failure. _Their_ bigger failure.

The one thing she couldn’t understand was why it wouldn’t float when they moved the pieces apart. The problems with the first islands had been a lack of growth, a tendency to crumble when detached from each other, and the bog making the plants wilt just before harvest. It was almost as if the bog was cruelly mocking them, giving them just enough hope before taking it away again. That had not deterred them for long; they found the problems and fixed them. But this time, Aja couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The last few models, though heavier, should not be sinking as rapidly as they did.They should not be sinking at all.

That thought kept turning over and over in her head as she laid in their bed that night. Diana was already asleep when Aja made it back to their small house, hidden away in the middle of nowhere. It was nearly 2 a.m. at that point, but that wasn’t unusual. Losing the midday hours meant working into the night, and often in the early mornings too. They used to spend their lunch time napping, but now that too was devoted to working. If the sun beat down on them too heavily (as it often did), they sat on the wooden floors inside, poring over schematics and graphs, trying to calculate where they went wrong. They had yet to find a precise answer.

They didn’t talk before going to bed that day, didn’t settle their argument, didn’t apologize. Once, they had made a virtue of never going to bed angry, but as so many other things, that rule had fallen to the wayside in face of their small, private disaster. Listening to her wife’s quiet breaths now, Aja couldn’t find even a remnant of the anger she had felt earlier. She wanted this to work, not only for the betterment of humankind, but for Diana as well. She needed it to work.

Aja slipped out of bed as quietly as she had gotten into it. She put on her coveralls and took her heavy rainboots in hand, walking barefoot outside. The bog had crept closer to the entrance of their house, and her heels and toes sank into the soft not-quite-mud as she walked forward. It was a quiet night, the heat almost bearable. She could hear crickets, and to her relief, mosquitoes as well — incessant pests that wouldn’t stop annoying her, but she knew they were integral to everything they were trying to do here. More and more mosquitoes had appeared since they first settled in this place. Aja liked to imagine that they were their small cheer squad, here to support them as they worked for a new future.

Aside from the bugs, it was quiet. She put aside her boots, realizing almost too late that she would not need them, and she shucked off her coveralls soon after, standing only in a top and underwear. The ground sucked at her feet as she walked, and as she got in deeper, the water rushed around her ankles, knees, her waist. Perhaps, she thought, the heat had gotten to her, nestled in her brain and made her think that this was a good idea when it so obviously wasn’t. It was her last thought before she dove into the waters of the bog.

It was cold. That was the most shocking part of it. Aja could not remember feeling cold in the last six months, if not more — the sun always beating down, the remnants of its rays warming the air even at night. But this bog was cold, and it was deep, deeper than Aja thought it should have been. Or perhaps it was just the night, the fact that she could see nothing down here, that made it seem so vast. She walked out, water lapping at her knees, at her thighs. She took a deep breath before diving in and starting to swim.

Decay was ridiculously slow in a bog. Aja knew that already, but she did not realize it fully until she saw the human skull; it took her a shocking beat to realize it was a dead yellowleg instead, the tiny creature almost fully preserved. Tala once told her of how they had pulled up the Tollund man and the Lindow man from bogs, how many more had been killed and sacrificed or simply fallen in and drowned. They had taken a break from their work for a moment to sit and watch the stars, glittering in the sky, as far away from the bog and their work as anything could be.

“I am named after a goddess of the morning and the evening stars,” Tala said, weaving stories with her words and with her hands. Diana had come to join them later, sitting still and quiet like a child hearing their favorite bed-time story. “I am both the sun and the moon,” said Tala, and Aja could see it now, in this moment, the moon reflecting at the bottom of the bog, startling the dead and the even deader, and the rest of the corpses who lived down there.

The faint moonlight was just enough for her to see the remnants of their island, sunk only a few hours past. There were, she knew, the remains of many other gardens just like it, lying in the soil below, but it was too late to save them. Aja reached down, fingers grasping at the light reeds they had used for this one. She pulled.

It came free of the soil almost too easily, and then she was pulling it upwards, over her head, and she watched through the black-as-night waters as it floated upwards, breaking the surface. She was still submerged, but the garden was free, their work restored to the world above. It had not been for nothing after all. She had always known that some things required a little extra; she had learned the lesson over and over since that day in the café. Some things were worth diving down into murky waters for, pulling until your body ached to heave it to the surface.

Aja closed her eyes, her arms feeling like lead. Already she knew she did not have enough air to swim to the surface._That,_ she thought, delirious on too-little oxygen and too-much heat, _that was okay, it would be alright_. The island floated above her, and it would grow cherries and blueberries and whatever they needed, and there were plenty of bones at the bottom for her to join. She would be in good company.

The breaking of the surface was a faraway sound, and her brain did not register it before strong arms circled her waist, and then the world was going too fast, and it was upwards, and Aja knew she had already breathed deep, black, peat-filled water into her lungs, knew that it was nestling there and making a home, but her back was on the ground now, the only somewhat denser-ground, and her lungs were being _pushed_, her ribs were cracking, and a wheezing cough turned into water-vomit as she rolled over and spat onto the ground. Aja imagined bones and peat and viviparous lizards spilling from her mouth onto the ground, but the air had come from Diana herself, and Aja could breathe again.

“You idiot!” She was shouting above her, as Aja still stared into the soil and wondered where the lizards had run off to. “What were you thinking? You nearly died!”

“The island is floating,” she said. “I pulled it up, and it…”

Diana pulled her close, her embrace nearly crushing, but Aja was not complaining. She was too busy contemplating the fact that she was alive, and that her skin still felt cold from the bog, and how nice that was. From the embrace, she could see the island, dripping water, the weeds on it ruined. They would have to pull it back in and replant it, but from here, with the moon shining down, Aja could see the exact engineering error, the place where the mold between parts broke off and made it take in water and sink. Yes, she thought, with Diana’s comforting arms circled around her; she would be able to fix this. It wouldn’t sink again.

_Nikoline Kaiser (she/they) writes short stories and poems focusing on feminism, family and queer themes. They live in Denmark and have a Master's degree in Comparative Literature. When not writing, they work on a project communicating information about women authors._


Aja watched the island float for just a single heartbeat, and then it sank. Like the others before it, reeds and grasses swal...

Chinampa

Slow rise of jawneckbellytalon shudders into the bald slant of pixelated sun. Fluffed leviathan exits nest rendered in 720p....

Condor Nest Livestream #923

**Encomium To The Sky That Pulls Me Through Wonder**

You forge my tongue into a robot just to bless
 <indent1>my incurable dialect with
 euthanasia,</indent1>
 it sounds pretty good as a demo & does not

<indent3>provoke plosives from rebellious aspirates.</indent3>
 <indent3>It demands more than hyperoxia</indent3>
 <indent2>to call out the puff from a sky drunken with oxygen.</indent2>
 <indent2>You smuggle a black cat</indent2>
 <indent3>into my crude canines just to teach me the dentition</indent3>
 <indent3>of a black panther.</indent3>

To you, this is all it takes to morph a black cat into a jaguar.
 <indent1>To you, a body drugged with wild oncogenes</indent1>
 <indent1>is the closest thing</indent1>
 to a spellbound that ignores boundaries like a fascinated sphinx, like a

<indent3>multipurpose cyborg. Any sharp lyric that could not make it</indent3>
 <indent3>into the mainstream songs</indent3>
 <indent2>should pass as an interlude; no chap should be wasted</indent2>
 <indent2>on the road to stardom,</indent2>
 <indent3>no heirloom ropes the ancestors dearly to my neck</indent3>
 <indent3>ore than the cowries</indent3>

you make out of my thumbnails. I’m beginning to cherish
 <indent1>every modest purpose you knit from my forsaken systems —</indent1>
 <indent1>the way it brightens</indent1>
 the cackling stars into huge galaxies with a dual-edged laughter

<indent3>breaking out of my wrecked mouth. You publish yourself chiefly</indent3>
 <indent3>in me as a marinated body</indent3>
 <indent2>where the year is always so young & full of tomorrow,</indent2>
 <indent2>where cyborgs earn</indent2>
 <indent3>a heart of their own to make themselves worthy of feelings</indent3>
 <indent3>& love.</indent3>

You grant me this purpose & it feels like an answered prayer,
 <indent1>to call me useful & bring it to birth, to pull me through</indent1>
 <indent1>the pool of wonder</indent1>
 & mold me a star amongst the twinkling fireflies.

**Selfless Machine**

There’s so much blade
 on the fist of a country —

so much scissors on the
 hands of blooming laws:

How many times will I start
 with furious naked wires

on my teeth? An egalitarian
 cosmos on my animal heart?

There’s a saintless way of
 excavation: a premonition

of the past taking tolls
 on the future & outlawing

my rocket from batching
 into the space with a lamp

only to end up discovering
 that god is a vacuum feasting

on our echoes. I practice this
 to understand the thing pulling

us under laws. What grows
 a rock in the ignorance of magma?

What walks on water in the oblivion
 of weight? If I had earned the odds to

save the dinosaurs from rebellious
 asteroids — if I had such grace of

pull in this world, don’t you think
 I would make our space selfless &

beautiful before a loyal cause
 blessing our websites with cookies?

_Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan (he/him/his) is a speculative writer of Izzi, Abakaliki ancestry; a Medical Laboratory Science student whose works have been nominated for the Forward Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best of The Net Award. He was the winner of Write About Now’s Cookout Literary Prize, and has been published in several magazines and journals._

Encomium To The Sky That Pulls Me Through Wonder

You forge my tongue into a robot just to bless
my incurable dialect with
eu...

Encomium to the Sky that Pulls Me Through Wonder, Selfless Machine

Do you still use our words —
astronaut, colony, alien,
lift-off?
I, old Earthbound,
listen for you in the night,
dream you fl...

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