The Algorithm Didn't Raise Me: Why Human Guidance Still Matters

Before AI models were teaching us how to cook, love, and live, it was my dad who taught me the kind of wisdom that doesn't come from data.

- LIA ESPINA

My dad wasn't a tech bro. But he was our family's original tech enthusiast. Long before smartphones and predictive algorithms, he brought home our very first XT PC, a clunky, beige box that hummed like a tiny spaceship in our living room. He bought it from the newly opened Abenson along Zapote Road back in the '80s, a time when computers still felt like future relics. It didn't do much by today's standards, but to us, it was magic. I still remember playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? on that thing, squinting at the pixelated screen while flipping through our Collier's Encyclopedia (or sometimes the Britannica).

He fiddled with C programming "just to try it," not because it was going to make him rich, and definitely not because an online course told him it was trending. He explored because he was curious. And that curiosity? It was contagious. He never pushed it on me. He just showed me that learning for the sake of it was cool. I didn't realize until much later that this was a form of parenting: gentle, quiet modeling, not a push notification.