In Pursuit of Signal w/ Jose Angel Castro

In Pursuit of Signal S1 Ep.2- ”Then To Now” Pt.1 w/Special guest Madison Clarke marks the first guest episode of the podcast. This conversation is so special considering that Madison was Jose Angel’s student in his class, My iWorld in 2012. My iWorld was the origin of In Pursuit of Signal, a Socratic discussion for middle and high school that got the ball rolling.

Madison was 12 years old then, so to have her as the first guest of this evolution is magical. Jose Angel and Madison chat their shared experience and how My iWorld affected her life then and now.

In Pursuit of Signal was born as the evolution of its little big sister, a class I taught to middle and high schoolers back in 2012 called My iWorld. It was the same concept just on a much smaller scale. Our weekly classes were Socratic discussions on emerging technologies and their impacts on our every day lives.

It was clear then, five years after the release of the first iPhone, that kids were being deeply impacted by the growing technology landscape. I worked to make the course as comprehensive and compelling as possible covering a wide range of tech topics from smart phones to gaming consoles to medical tech.

I would like to offer a challenge to my subscribers by assigning you the very first assignment I gave to the My iWorld kids. Let’s see who’s up for the challenge. The prize? A 30-minute private zoom call with me to chat on a tech topic of your choice! Ready?

The task is to make a list of the features on your mobile device that would have been a SEPARATE machine in 1987 (example: a cd collection, the stereo to PLAY your collection on, a professional camera, etc.), then see if you can find and add up the hard cost for those items at that time. Go!

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

In Pursuit of Signal: Aaaaaand…begin.