Logic

About Logic

Logic is a magazine about technology, society and the human impacts of software, published from New York. Founded by Ben Tarnoff, Moira Weigel, Jim Fingal and Christa Hartsock, with its first issue appearing in early 2017, it is a critical journal devoted to examining the tech industry with the seriousness and nuance more often applied to literature and politics. Published by the Logic Foundation, a California nonprofit public benefit corporation organized to promote education about technology, the magazine brings together tech workers, organizers, academics and activists in a shared conversation about how technology shapes everyday life. Its website is logicmag.io.

Founding and the First Issue

Logic was founded by four editors with unusual backgrounds for a literary magazine. Three of the four founders came from the technology world rather than from traditional publishing or academia: Ben Tarnoff, a writer and former tech worker; Jim Fingal, who had worked in music software; and Christa Hartsock, who handled publicity and distribution. The fourth, Moira Weigel, was completing a doctorate in comparative literature and film and media studies at Yale and had recently published Labor of Love, a book about the invention of dating. The group conceived the magazine while living in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the heart of the industry they intended to examine.

The first issue, titled "Intelligence" and published in early 2017, set the template for what would follow. Its contents included an editorial manifesto on disruption, an interview with an anonymous data scientist in three parts, essays on deep learning and fintech, and a roundtable on technology and psychology. The issue announced the magazine's ambition: to be a collection of essays, interviews and articles from people in the technology world who were not ordinarily given the opportunity to share their experiences and thoughts about their industry in writing.

The Manifesto

The magazine's founding manifesto positioned Logic as an attempt to do for technology what publications like n+1 and Jacobin had done for literature and politics: to apply nuanced, critical thinking to a world that was usually covered either in utopian hype or in doom-laden alarm. The editors argued that the conversation about technology had been dominated by the voices of chief executives and venture capitalists, and that a different kind of publication was needed, one that delighted in capturing technology in all its contradictions, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and public-relations hype.

The manifesto called for writing that moved past both boosterism and gloom, seeking instead a clear-eyed examination of how software and digital systems actually function in people's lives. The magazine presented itself as a little magazine in the tradition of The Baffler and The New Inquiry, but with a masthead drawn from the tech industry itself. This positioning gave the magazine a distinctive authority: its editors and contributors understood the technology from the inside, even as they subjected it to critical scrutiny.

Themed Issues

Each issue of Logic focuses on a specific theme, allowing the magazine to explore the effects of technology on culture from many angles. Past themes have included intelligence, sex, bodies, scale, play, care, nature, cloud, security, China, kids, faith, movement and beacons. The thematic structure gives each issue the coherence of a small book while allowing the magazine as a whole to range across the full landscape of technology and society, from the politics of data to the intimacies of digital life.

The themes have reflected the magazine's commitment to examining technology through lenses that the tech press typically ignores. Issues on sex and bodies explored how digital systems shape gender, desire and embodiment; issues on care and nature considered technology's relationship to maintenance, repair and the living world. The "Beacons" issue, edited by Khadijah Abdurahman, drew on the Black radical tradition and abolitionism to think through technology, exemplifying the magazine's willingness to bring unexpected intellectual frameworks to bear on its subject.

Voices from the Valley

The magazine's editorial project extended into book publishing through a collaboration with FSG Originals that produced Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do, and How They Do It, by founders Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff. The book conducted unfiltered, in-depth, anonymous interviews with tech workers at all levels, including a data scientist, a startup founder, a cook who served their lunch and a public-relations specialist, opening a conversation about the tech industry that had previously been dominated by the voices of chief executives.

The book embodied the magazine's core method: giving voice to the people who build and maintain technological systems but are rarely heard in public discussions of technology. By interviewing workers across the industry's hierarchy, from engineers to service staff, the book revealed the human labor behind the myth of frictionless automation. It was presented as a vital and comprehensive view of an industry that governs modern life, and it extended the magazine's reach to readers who might never pick up a little magazine.

Editorial Process

Logic has described itself, with deliberate exaggeration, as a magazine for people who don't usually read, written by people who don't usually write. Its imagined readership is composed largely of tech workers, broadly defined, along with organizers, activists and people doing political work, an audience quite different from the typical little-magazine readership. Its contributors are mostly specialists of one kind or another, academics or technologists, who often have little experience writing for a general audience, or sometimes writing at all.

As a result, the magazine's editorial process is particularly labor-intensive. The editors have described their work as creating connective tissue between different constituencies, connecting tech workers with organizers and academics by developing an editorial process that makes these groups comprehensible to one another. Working with contributors who have never been edited before means teaching them how to be edited in addition to editing them, a demanding but rewarding process that has produced some of the most distinctive technology writing of the past decade.

Creative Direction

The magazine's visual identity has been shaped by creative director Xiaowei Wang, who oversaw the publication's layout and design along with Christa Hartsock. The design of Logic reflects its intellectual ambitions, presenting complex arguments about technology in a format that is both beautiful and accessible. The magazine's covers and interiors have given it a distinctive presence on newsstands and bookshelves, distinguishing it from both academic journals and commercial technology publications.

The creative direction has been integral to the magazine's mission of reaching readers outside the usual literary and intellectual scenes. By presenting serious critical writing in an inviting and well-designed package, the magazine has sought to draw in the tech workers and organizers who make up its imagined audience. The design embodies the magazine's conviction that ideas about technology deserve the same care and craft as ideas about art and literature.

The Techlash and Reinvention

Logic launched just as the techlash, the popular and critical backlash against the power of large technology companies, was barely coming together. Over the magazine's first five years, the conversation around technology changed dramatically, moving from the early stirrings of criticism to what founder Ben Tarnoff has described as the saturation point of the techlash. The magazine rode this wave of critical attention while trying to maintain its distinctive voice amid a growing chorus of technology criticism.

After five years, the founders concluded that the magazine needed to evolve to remain relevant, recognizing that little magazines are products of a particular moment and milieu and must keep changing to stay vital. Tarnoff announced that the magazine would move into the leadership of a new generation of editors, with Khadijah Abdurahman and Xiaowei Wang set to put together a new magazine carrying forward some of Logic's commitments while charting a new path. The transition reflected the founders' belief that the project needed a new paradigm to continue with creativity and pride.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website at logicmag.io publishes the magazine's essays, interviews and manifestos alongside information about current and past issues. The site makes the magazine's distinctive brand of technology criticism available to readers around the world, extending its reach beyond the print edition's circulation. The website has also hosted reflections on the magazine's own history and future, including conversations among the editors about the craft of editing and the evolution of the publication.

The digital presence has allowed the magazine to participate in ongoing debates about technology in real time, complementing the slower rhythm of its themed print issues. The site's archive preserves the magazine's back catalog, from the "Intelligence" issue forward, creating a record of how critical thinking about technology developed during one of the most consequential periods in the industry's history. For readers discovering the magazine online, the website serves as both an introduction and a library.

Legacy

In less than a decade, Logic established itself as one of the most important critical voices on technology in American publishing. By bringing together tech workers, scholars and activists in a shared editorial project, it created a new kind of conversation about the digital systems that shape modern life, one grounded in both technical knowledge and critical imagination. Its themed issues, its books and its editorial method have influenced a generation of technology writers and critics.

The magazine's legacy also lies in its demonstration that the little-magazine form, with its independence, its seriousness and its willingness to take risks, remains vital in the digital age. From its founding manifesto to its reinvention under new leadership, Logic has shown that the most interesting thinking about technology comes not from the industry's public-relations apparatus but from the workers, scholars and organizers who live with its consequences. As the technologies it covers continue to transform society, the questions Logic asked remain as urgent as ever.