This new era of Reboot is especially focused on thoughtful tech criticism and the role our publication can play in helping technologists dream of better, bolder futures.
For the end of 2023, we're eager to publish a roundup of tiny tech reviews, authored by the Reboot community. We're accepting short written commentaries on your favorite and least favorite things this year: whether software products, tech policy/regulation, written/artistic pieces about tech, or anything else. (Examples of things you could write about: Biden's AI executive order, the film M3GAN, the Bluesky platform, the 8-hour Balaji / Lex Fridman podcast, the Lina Khan FTC, the late Reddit client Apollo, self-driving cars in SF, Spotify's AI DJ, "Progress Studies" as an intellectual movement. Be creative!)
If you'd like to submit a review for inclusion, please complete this form by December 3. If accepted, we'll reach out to go through one round of edits before publishing in the newsletter in mid-December.
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Some questions to consider answering in your review:
- For technologies or products: Why should we be excited, or scared, or curious? What's totally novel about it? What are the nth-degree implications of its existence?
- For policies, campaigns, or other activist efforts: What makes this theory of change special? Why is it working, or not? What can other advocates learn?
- For tech writing, art, and film: What makes this informative or creative? What new perspectives does it provoke?
Other notes: Consider using this opportunity to celebrate the under-celebrated, or to de-hype the over-hyped. Make connections between the universal and the particular. Act as a tour guide; don't assume your reader's expertise. Be thoughtful and good-faith—don't dunk down. Follow the word count!
For more on how Reboot thinks of tech criticism, read this piece. You can contact jasmine@joinreboot.org with questions.