I’d really like to make something clear about In Pursuit of Signal. I’m not looking to tell people to not use technology at all or anything crazy like that. I am not anti-technology. Quite to the contrary, actually. I probably have every machine known to man, because I am a bit of a tech and gadget enthusiast. And in my work as a photographer, I have to use technology all the time. So many different aspects of it. In fact, I have stop myself from buying every new gadget I come across. So, I’m not trying to create a forum to convince people to abandon technology.

I say that because I know that very shortly, I’ll get some feedback to that effect, because what I’m looking to do is explore all aspects of our use of technology, our relationship with technology in as balanced a way as possible.

I say “relationship” for a very specific reason, because there’s a very specific emotional component with our technology today that has never existed for any other technological advancements in the history of humanity.

If you pick up somebody else’s phone without permission, there’s emotional content there. Or, if somebody tries to pick up your phone. Or, if we give a kid a phone or an iPad, and then we want to take that machine away. There is very specific (we’ve all seen it in restaurants or airports or malls) emotional content there. OR, imagine the moment you can’t find your phone, the panic, the anxiety….emotional content.

When we start to look at our growing use of artificial intelligence like ChatGPT and other agentic AI, those relationships are becoming more and more intimate and more valuable to us as human beings. We are engaging with AI agents to write everything from term papers to love letters to legal briefs. Agents are becoming our virtual shoppers and digital therapists. If that doesn’t equal “relationship”, I don’t know what does.

So it’s gone beyond the use of a tool like a hammer, which is used to hammer nails, a very specific use case. We generally don’t have that kind of emotional connection to a hammer, even if we’re a carpenter.

So, as we begin to explore all facets of this really broad topic, we’re going to explore both the positive effects and the negative aspects. We can all see the tremendous benefits, and we can also see the tremendous challenges or setbacks. Those things are becoming clearer the deeper we go into the advancements of this changing-at- lightning-speed technological landscape.

As machines gotten closer and closer to our bodies (even being introduce into our bodies now), we very clearly have to weigh the credits versus the debits, and this is where we can do that. We have some s**t to talk about, and it’s a lot of a lot. Lol.

So I welcome you to join me In Pursuit of Signal.

-Jose Angel

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