I’ve been taking photographs and chatting with folks in San Francisco’s Tenderloin for about six or seven years, now. One of the first insights I gained was a more acute awareness of how appearances prejudice my assumptions about individuals.

Folks in the TL are often unhoused, disheveled, ragged, and displaying dramatic signs of ill health, addiction, or mental illness. What is not visible until a conversation starts is the depth of experience, family connections, knowledge, raw intelligence, and insight. It is humbling.

Mike (first pic) for instance was articulate in his understanding of technology’s growing impact on society, he made a generic reference to Moore’s Law… on and on. As we walked away, he mentioned that a toe had been amputated recently and he knew that he had to pay closer attention to the health of his feet.

I guess my point is that we are living in a time when many of the have’s simply don’t care about the have-nots and they are being judged not as people with meaning and potential, but as menaces and parasites.

Technology increasingly dehumanize us, as Mike pointed out. It’s up to us to find ways to see actual faces and hear actual voices unmediated by bits, bytes, or billionaires.