It is a question that makes most of us flinch. We like to think of our taste as a fortress-a private, sacred space built from the books we read, the films we love, and the specific way the light hit the floor in our childhood homes. We believe we choose our tools. We believe the tools work for us.

But after a morning spent sneezing seven times in a row-the kind of fit that leaves your eyes red and your thoughts fragmented-I sat down to look at my own archives and realized I have been lying to myself.

I am a digital citizenship teacher. My job, quite literally, is to tell students how to maintain their agency in a world of algorithms. I tell them to watch for the nudge, to spot the bias, and to keep their hands on the wheel. Yet, for three years, I have been using the same set of upscalers and enhancement tools to “fix” my old family photos and my professional headshots.

The Teacher’s Uncomfortable Realization

I was wrong. I thought I was using these tools to recover the truth of a blurry moment. I thought I was just “adding back” what the lens had missed. But as I looked at a photo of my mother from

Sofia’s thumb hovered over the green call button, her nail clicking rhythmically against the glass of her phone. She was sitting in a small kitchen in Morelia, the scent of damp pavement and fried corn drifting in through the window, but her mind was entirely occupied by a script.

She had written it on a yellow post-it note: “Could you please tell me the CAT and the total amount including fees?” She practiced it three times, whispering to the empty room. By the fourth time, her voice cracked. She wasn’t asking for a gift or a miracle; she was asking for the price of a product. Yet, her heart was hammering at 87 beats per minute, and her palms were slick with the kind of sweat usually reserved for job interviews or breakup conversations.

When the agent finally picked up, Sofia didn’t start with her question. She started with “Disculpe.” I’m sorry to bother you. I’m sorry for taking your time. I’m sorry for needing to know how much this $7007 peso loan is actually going to cost me over the next 17 months.