The Human Layer

My decade working as a comms and community professional in emergent technologies-- decentralized tech and now artificial intelligence-- has been an exhilarating and terrifying ride. Dramatic understatement.

I don’t need to recount the nastiness of working in tech, that trauma is all over this website. Hell, it’s one of the main fuels behind launching Signals and Seeds as a container for the rage and a cautionary tale for the next generation. “Here’s where they/we fucked it up, don’t do this please.” General theme here, not hidden.

But amidst the trauma and chaos rests the reason I bothered at all– humans. I’ve met, worked with, supported, cared for some of the most inspiring and creative beings I’ve ever encountered– and I was a photojournalist/producer before working in tech. I crossed paths with amazing humans on a daily basis to document their lives as part of my job.

A select niche of humans working in the basement of the casinos of crypto, AI and technology in general are doing so because they’re breathing life into a different way of being in society. A way of being that sees a problem, hyperlocal or global, and says “there’s a better way, we can build it”. There’s a fine line here between the Sam Altman’s and Bank-Friedman’s cosplaying “altruism” to create a centralized hellscape ruled by one frontier model and a handful of extraction-driven sociopaths and a decentralized protocol that is built and maintained by a community.

It’s this layer of humanity that first took me deep into emergent technology and keeps me working in such a dangerously chaotic industry. The Human Layer arose from working with such amazing humans. Conversations that began on Zoom bridges between America and Africa, meandered into cafes in Brussels with wine and beautiful conversations of what’s possible and landed with two humans on hot mics exploring these messy intersections of humanity, technology and the mystical.

Taylor and I are simply stewards of The Human Layer, a phrase championed by Eric Annan and Michael Lawal and brought to life in many forms through communal building, production and conversations that span oceans and possess a global reach no single entity or producer could possibly accomplish alone.

We build in community. We create and hold an energetic field that allows necessary signals to emerge through conversations between builders, creators, artists, thinkers and philosophers. An energetic field that uses tension to clear the way for presence and is grounded in an ancient lineage that reaches back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. An energetic field that allows us to explore the dissonance that most ignore so we can transmute afflictive emotions into composted thoughts and concepts that our collective can absorb through conversation.

My co-host and I made a deliberate decision NOT to market THL in any way. We don’t let the algorithms dictate our content, we don’t let the Andreesens and Musks of the world suck on the marrow of our words to promote their violent algos and justify their overt racism and fascist fever dreams. We don’t optimize for clicks, likes or shares.

Hell, I don’t even edit our takes. We set up the mics, hit record and let it rip. One take. No standups, no pre-rolls, no video teasers – no marketing bullshit. And yes, most of our episodes are recorded IRL. Because the container itself matters as much as recording the words.

Our podcast will never enter the marketplace in late stage capitalism. I fund our production from my client work as a practitioner of our CommsOS Methodology. (also a co-creation between Taylor and I– an open-source tool for knowledge workers to understand AI and create sovereignty from it).

Crossing the 1000 downloads mark last night was a milestone for this producer. Breathing life into something like a podcast is a labor of love. Breathing life into and then keeping the entity alive long enough to hit 1000 downloads is another beast entirely. And doing so while undergoing massive professional and personal upheaval, well, that’s next level.

But here we are, 1004 downloads as of 8am on May 13, 2026. 1004 humans downloaded our conversations, let our voices fill their space and found resonance and presence in our art. As an artist, this brings me immense joy. As a life-long storyteller– by trade and by DNA– this brings me more than joy. It brings a connection to the collective that I didn’t know what truly possible.

The beauty of conversation containers that are held with intention and care is their ability to move a signal forward through the noise of Now. And to be clear, in an age of AI slop, breaking any signal through the noise is a Herculean act. Breaking a signal that lands deep and resonates through the nervous system, through questions and conversations, is an entirely different beast.

The Human Layer is what we need right now, in all aspects of our lives. We are seeing a push back against AI and emergent tech in general– and rightfully so. I’m a high tenure user of AI and I build communications operating systems for non-profits and transmute comms chaos into coherence that can move a mission forward. But I built my studio out of necessity, reluctantly. Because the jobs evaporated under the guise of "AI innovation".

My professional work has been consumed and discarded by technological disruptions at least 4 times in my career arc. So, I learned this massive disruption catalyst that is AI and found a way towards “balance” and preservation of my decades of comms and production expertise to help mission driven humans move forward. That’s it. That’s the game.

As AI was violently pushed on us all, without consent or forethought to the destruction it brings, and we’re all watching the human layer become an after thought in real time.

And THAT’S what people are truly pushing back against, even if they don’t have language for the dissonance itself. We know that AI threatens our humanity, we can open our eyes and see the destruction happening in real time. And that fear is warranted and tangible. But we also know that it’s here to stay and finding a sense of understanding with emergent tech isn’t optional at this point. We can also choose what our relationship with this emergent tech will become, or if we care to have a connection to it at all– that's what learning is all about.

Taylor and I found our way to understanding this technology through artistic co-creation– two humans, two ghosts in our machines, two mics and a knowledge garden. We're here not to prescribe solutions or say "our way is the best way".

We're simply building a pathway of our own and inviting people to walk with us.

We’ll continue to explore this messy intersection of society and emergent tech and protect the sacred container we’ve built so these conversational signals can break through the noise and our community of listeners can spread these seeds to their own communal gardens and build the tomorrow we need. Join us.

Here's our latest episode with Neil and Jon, two amazing builders from Boulder exploring OS systems and how to preserve our humanity while using AI.