After a lengthy, involuntary COVID pause, we’re excited to release Offscreen Issue 24 today! As usual, first some house-keeping: subscriber copies are being sent out starting Wednesday morning CET and we’ll do another big round of shipments next Monday! If you’re not a subscriber, go ahead and order your copy now to be part of one of our first shipments.

International shipping in COVID times is still very much a mixed bag. There will be some delays, especially with shipments going outside the EU. We appreciate your patience!

In issue 24 we touch on a lot of timely, meaty topics:

• Ali Alkhatib
  The expert on human-computer interaction explains why Big Tech’s algorithms are inherently unjust and offers some refreshingly simple perspectives on how to improve tech.
• Jutta Treviranus
  It was an absolute delight to hear Jutta speak about her immense body of work in the field of Inclusive Design and how our default notion of ‘designing for the majority’ makes all of us more vulnerable.
• Xiaowei Wang
  A fascinating deep-dive into Chinese (internet) culture and the surprising connections between rural China and Western tech hubs like Silicon Valley.
• Jillian C. York
  The activist and writer highlights the many free speech challenges we face as a society deeply entangled in a system of surveillance capitalism.

As usual, we relied on the generous support by our sponsors to make this issue happen: DNSimple, Bakken & Bæck, MAD, MetaLab, SiteGround, and Dovetail. And of course, a big ‘thank you’ to all Patrons of this issue.

Shipping & price changes

The disruptions of COVID have not just made shipping times harder to predict, it also led to a range of changes in shipping rates by postal services around the world. Sadly, we were informed by our shipper last year that the cost of sending magazines to the US has (in some cases) more than doubled! Prices for shipments going to other countries outside the EU have also increased.

Since shipping is included in the price of the magazine, it means our profit margin decreased substantially for the majority of our sales since our last issue. Offscreen is already a fairly pricy publication – too pricy to reach readers from certain parts of the world – and so we’re very cognisant of the fact that increasing the price will make the publication less accessible.

While the subscription price remains the same for now, we did increase the non-subscriber price by $2 to now $22 in order to at least compensate for some of the additional costs. We’ll keep a close eye on our shipping costs with this issue, but we might not be able to avoid a small price increase for all readers in the future.

Needless to say, your ongoing support means a lot!

View the details of issue 24 here →

Enjoy these shots of issue 24 being produced at our printer in Berlin: