What is Kernel?

Kernel Magazine is the flagship print magazine of Reboot, a publication and community for and by technologists building a better collective future.

Why are we here? We believe that technology can be transformative, for both better and worse, and that as technologists, we have a responsibility to own our role in this transformation. We believe technology exists within broader systems of power, and that understanding these systems as well as individual actors within them is critical to driving material change. Finally, we believe there is serious intellectual work to be done here.

How will we get there? We believe in analysis that is both generative and adversarial. We value different viewpoints and placing authors in conversation and debate. This discourse might take a variety of forms: deeply researched essays with a critical eye, personal essays, speculative utopias and dystopias, creative short stories or poetry, edited conversations, published community responses, and more.

We recommend reading some of our published essays from previous issues to get a sense of what resonates with us.

We do not accept work that has been previously published elsewhere.

What are we looking for in pitches?

Essays are our bread-and-butter. That said, we’re also open to interviews and alternative formats if it’s what works best for the piece. We want to see work about the ideas, movements, people, and tools that might bring us to the future.

Your pitch should include:

• A clear thesis. Your pitch does not need to show the complete planned structure of your unwritten essay already. The research and writing process can be tough and things change, but we do want to know what your main point will be and what your research plan is. The content of your essay should address technology in some way, in any sense of the word. We encourage you to browse previous issues, as well as our theme and CFP announcement, to get a sense of the range of topics we’re interested in. Also, keep in mind that as a print publication, our timelines are long, and your words will remain in the printed artifact for as long as anyone has a copy; if you think your essay will be extremely sensitive to news and new developments, you may do better pitching the newsletter instead.
• Forward-looking analysis. We want analysis that accounts for but also extends beyond the present moment. This doesn’t mean that you always need to propose a concrete, actionable solution to whatever theme or conflict that you are addressing, nor should this be conflated with techno solutionism. Still, we are invested in understanding the role that technology and technologists play in shaping the future. The tension at hand is rarely about technology itself; we want analysis of systems, structure, and power.
• A unique perspective. What do you uniquely bring to the discussion of this topic? We don’t expect you to be a seasoned industry professional with multiple years of working in and around this topic, because everyone has a valuable perspective to share. We are eager to hear you elucidate what that perspective is.

What does the writing and editing process look like?

You will be paired with one other editor who has a background we’ve chosen specifically to match your piece.

We expect editors to work closely with writers from very early stages, and to make serious substantive contributions to the final shape of the piece, not just stylistic and sentence-level comments near the end. For me, engaging deeply with the piece (on either the editing or writing side) is one of the most rewarding parts of the process, and I really hope that we can build some sort of working intellectual relationship between editors and writers.

For Issue 6, you should expect to hear back from us by late February. If we accept your pitch, you’ll have the next six or so weeks to work with your editor to bring your work from the pitch to a final polished piece, with a deadline of April 15 for a copy-ready essay.

Unlike publishing online, note that deadlines for print are much stricter: we need time for our designers to lay out the piece, time for the printers to actually print thousands of pages, and time for the printed artifacts to actually get to us before launch. Please keep this in mind as you work through a piece, and please keep us updated as delays come up.

Contact

The Lead Editors of Issue 6 are Jacob Kuppermann (morry@joinreboot.org), Shira Abramovich (shira@joinreboot.org) and Hannah Scott (hannah@joinreboot.org).

The Managing Editor of Issue 6 is Jacob Kuppermann; reach them at jacob@joinreboot.org.

The director of Reboot is Jasmine Sun; reach her at jasmine@joinreboot.org.