The community that became Kernel started with a question that a lot of young people in technology were asking during the pandemic but few had a place to explore: what if the industry we're building is not building the world we want? Reboot — a collective of students, engineers, designers, and technologists — formed in response, publishing essays and hosting events for a growing community of people who wanted to think critically about technology without abandoning it. By 2021, the group had produced over forty essays, run a fellowship across sixteen schools and four countries, and built an internal community of over 150 contributors. Then Jasmine Sun, Reboot's founder, announced their most ambitious project yet: a print magazine.
Kernel launched its inaugural issue with a question — "Where do we go from here?" — and organized the answers into three sections: past, present, and future. The structure was deliberate. The past section situates technology within historical lineages of thought and power. The present examines the values embedded in the systems we use daily. The future speculates about what we might still build, and what might be built without our consent. The writing is a mix of deeply researched nonfiction, personal narrative, short fiction, poetry, and visual art — all produced by young technologists who are as comfortable writing code as they are writing criticism.
Under editor-in-chief Emily Liu, the magazine has published three issues, each exploring a different theme with the kind of intellectual ambition that tech commentary rarely achieves. The second issue focused on movements — the people, tools, and ideas that drive material change. The contributors include tech workers, organizers, artists, and academics, placed deliberately in conversation and debate with one another. Each issue also comes with a virtual expansion pack: podcasts, audio recordings, and community responses published on Reboot's newsletter.
Kernel is printed annually, sold through its own shop, and operates entirely without advertising or venture backing. It is, in its own words, an honest articulation of how to maintain hope in a technological future while increasing our agency in shaping it. For an industry that has spent two decades telling its own story through press releases and product launches, a magazine written by the workers themselves — critical, literate, and unsponsored — is a quietly radical act.
Explore Kernel at <a href="https://www.kernelmag.io/" target="\_blank">kernelmag.io