Last year, we decided to start a magazine. We felt disappointed by the mainstream conversation about technology, and we wanted to create space for an alternative.
Then Trump happened.
At first, nothing seemed to matter. Why publish a magazine about technology in the age of Trump? Why write or read about anything but Trump?
We thought about it, and came up with a couple of reasons.
The first one is easy: Fuck Trump. We have to fight him, and we will. But we’re not going to let him monopolize our bandwidth. That’s what he wants. Trump is the hideous id of the internet. He will do anything for our clicks—and he wants all of our clicks. But modern operating systems have made us good multitaskers. We can walk and chew gum and still slay the dragon.
The second reason is more important: Trump is a wake-up call. His election proves that many of the wise men and women who claim to understand how our world works have no clue. He is a reminder that we can’t afford to have stupid conversations about important things anymore.
Trump is a creature of technology. A technologized world created the conditions for Trumpism. Social dislocations caused by automation helped create his base, and social media incubated and propagated his fascist rhetoric.
Technology will continue to serve our Troll-in-Chief, as his Administration and his allies in Congress hunt undesirables with databases and drones. Some of their barbarisms will be dramatic and highly visible. Others will be piecemeal, discreet, and hard to grasp immediately. We need intelligent writing to make both forms of brutality legible. We also need to build the tools that can help us disrupt and dismantle Trump’s agenda.
The era of Trump will be a technologized era, like the one before it. We will be paying attention—and proposing ways to resist. (Along these lines, stay tuned for Tech Against Trump, a short book coming soon from Logic.)
We will also be in the streets. We hope you’ll join us.
Yours,
Jim Fingal
Christa Hartsock
Ben Tarnoff
Xiaowei Wang
Moira Weigel