Noema a new magazine: ideas and culture for a transforming world
June 2021 marked one year since the launch of Noema Magazine, (which is available online for free), a crucial milestone for the new publication focused on exploring and amplifying transformative ideas. Noemais working to attract audiences through longform perspectives and contemporary artwork that weave together threads in philosophy, governance, geopolitics, economics, technology, and culture.
“What began more than seven years ago as a news-driven global voices platform for The Huffington Post known as The WorldPost, and later in partnership with The Washington Post, has been reimagined,” said Nathan Gardels, editor-in-chief of Noema. “It has evolved into a platform for expansive ideas through a visual lens, and a timely and provocative portal to plumb the deeper issues behind present events.”
The magazine’s editorial board, involved in the genesis and as content drivers of the magazine, includes Orhan Pamuk, Arianna Huffington, Fareed Zakaria, Reid Hoffman, Dambisa Moyo, Walter Isaacson, Pico Iyer, and Elif Shafak. Pieces by thinkers cracking the calcifications of intellectual domains include, among many others:
• Francis Fukuyama on the future of the nation-state
• A collage of commentary on COVID with Yuval Harari and Jared Diamond
• An interview with economist Mariana Mazzucato on “mission-oriented government”
• Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang on digital democracy
• Hedge-fund giant Ray Dalio in conversation with Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz
• Shannon Vallor on how Artificial Intelligence I is making us less intelligent and more artificial
• Former Governor Jerry Brown in conversation with Stewart Brand
• Ecologist Suzanne Simard on the intelligence of forest ecosystems
• A discussion on protecting the biosphere with Bill Gates’s guru Vaclav Smil
• An original story by Chinese science-fiction writer Hao Jingfang Noema seeks to highlight how the great transformations of the 21st century are reflected in the work of today’s artistic innovators. Most articles are accompanied by an original illustration, melding together an aesthetic experience with ideas in social science and public policy. Among others, in the past year, the magazine has featured work from multimedia artist Pierre Huyghe, illustrator Daniel Martin Diaz, painter Scott Listfield, graphic designer and NFT artist Jonathan Zawada, 3D motion graphics artist Kyle Szostek, illustrator Moonassi, collage artist Lauren Lakin, and aerial photographer Brooke Holm. Additional contributions from artists include Berggruen Fellows Agnieszka Kurant and Anicka Yi discussing how their work explores the myth of the self.
Noema is available online and annually in print; the magazine’s second print issue was released on July 13, 2021. The theme of this issue is “planetary realism,” which proposes to go beyond the exhausted notions of globalization and geopolitical competition among nation-states to a new “Gaiapolitik.” It addresses the existential challenge of climate change across all borders and recognizes that human civilization is but one part of the ecology of being that encompasses multiple intelligences from microbes to forests to the emergent global exoskeleton of Artificial Intelligence and internet connectivity (more on this in the letter from the editors below).
Published by the Berggruen Institute, Noema is an incubator for the Institute’s core ideas, such as “participation without populism,” “pre-distribution” and universal basic capital (vs. income), and the need for dialogue between the U.S. and China to avoid an AI arms race or inadvertent war.
“The world needs divergent thinking on big questions if we’re going to meet the challenges of the 21st century; Noema publishes bold and experimental ideas,” said Kathleen Miles, executive editor of Noema. “The magazine cross-fertilizes ideas across boundaries and explores correspondences among them in order to map out the terrain of the great transformations underway.”