Dear Futurism Readers —

I’m James Del. For the past 4 years, I’ve been the publisher of Futurism.com — but this is my first time writing for the site. Nice to finally meet you. Broadly speaking, it’s my job to ensure that our small, ten-person operation has the means to continue supporting itself as we bring curated and original science and tech news, perspective, takeaways, and features to our millions of monthly readers and subscribers.

I’m writing to you today for a few reasons, but first and foremost: Thank you. The support of our readers has been tremendous over this last year — this absolutely unprecedented, weird, frightening, incredible moment in time — and Futurism truly would not be here through all this madness if it wasn’t for all of you visiting, sharing, and discussing our work every day. So: Thanks. Again. It means the world. And our jobs.

Next thing: Futurism introduced a new subscription paywall late last year. And we really appreciate those of you who’ve already signed up (which you can do right here.) Right now, the subscription is $5.99/month (or $59.99/year). Being a subscriber gets you full access to all of our articles, our archives, and an ad-free experience on the website.

Some of you have (to our great surprise!) been excited to pay for the site, and support our work. Others have been disappointed in having to pay for the site. We get it. And we know asking for more money is kind of annoying, and I wish we didn’t have to do it.

But we’re a small team, an independent, non-mainstream, insurgent media effort, with big dreams for the future. And the digital ad market is such that we simply can’t rely on advertisers alone to make ends meet. Your support isn’t making any rich people richer, or being spent on a fancy new office cold brew machine (we actually shut our Brooklyn office down amid the pandemic). It’s directly supporting the writers whose work you see on the site every day — it goes, directly, into the survival of Futurism. So if you appreciate the work this team does, please consider signing up for a subscription. Every little bit helps.

Finally, a few of you have reached out to let us know that you love the site, but can’t afford to pay for it. I’ve been particularly moved by the number of educators and students who have reached out with stories about how important Futurism is to them. If you’re a regular reader facing either financial hardship or work in education (including students), please reach out to our customer support team. We want this content to be as broadly accessible as possible, and we trust that our readers who can afford it will do the right thing and help support that mission. In exchange, we’re here to support our readers who simply can’t right now.

This is a lot of text from someone you don’t normally hear from, so I really appreciate you taking the time to make it this far. Since Futurism’s beginnings, we’ve always tried to provide a digestible, shareable way to better understand the future we’re living in. It’s my core belief that while the future can often seem scary (especially as of late), through collective understanding and appreciation for facts, science, and technology, we can better appreciate the possibilities that make the future less scary and more exciting for all of us.

As ever, here’s to the stories of tomorrow, today, and may we continue to work for you, our readers, to keep telling them.

James Del
Publisher, Futurism.com


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