Aperture is a magazine about progress — about the institutions, technologies, and ideas that quietly determine whether the future will be richer, healthier, and freer than the present. We publish long essays, three or four times a month, on subjects that other publications either ignore or cover badly.
Our editorial taste is for the unfashionable middle of things: the chemistry that feeds the world, the codes that build the cities, the regulations that govern the labs, the wires that move the electricity. Most of what is consequential in modern life is operated by professionals whose work is invisible to the people it serves. We think this is a mistake of attention, and we are trying to fix it one essay at a time.
We are not a news magazine. We do not chase the news cycle, and we will not be the first place you read about whatever happened yesterday. We aim, instead, to be the place you go when you have time to read something carefully, and you want to come out of it understanding the world a little better than you went in.
Our essays tend to run between three and ten thousand words. They are written by experts, but they are not written for experts; we work with our authors on multiple drafts to make sure that a curious general reader can follow the argument without having to pause and look anything up. We pay above market rates for this kind of work, because we think it is among the most undersupplied genres of writing.
We are factually careful. Every essay is fact-checked by an independent reader before publication. When we get something wrong — and we do, occasionally — we correct it visibly and explain what happened.
We do not pretend to be neutral. We think progress is real, that it is the result of identifiable choices, and that some choices are better than others. We try to be honest about our priors and to argue with the strongest version of the views we disagree with.
We do not run advertising. Aperture is funded by reader subscriptions and a small endowment from supporters who believe in long-form journalism about progress. If you find what we do valuable, the best way to keep us going is to subscribe.
Aperture is edited by a small standing staff in London, with contributing editors in Cambridge, Boston, and Singapore. Our authors are drawn from across the academic and professional worlds — scientists, engineers, historians, policymakers, and the occasional working journalist who has gotten tired of the news cycle. If you would like to write for us, our submission guidelines are linked from the footer of every page.
We are named after the opening in a camera lens: the variable hole that admits light. The more you let in, the more you can see. That seemed like the right metaphor.