In the world of modern communications, especially at a company like Microsoft, it can feel as if we’re channeling Odin, watching every headline, every tweet, every blog post, every whisper in the digital wind. And having seen everything, the temptation is strong to respond to everything, to correct every misconception, to stamp out every spark before it becomes a wildfire. But as Mike Masnick so memorably described in the Streisand effect, sometimes the very act of responding can amplify what we wish would fade away.
The calculus of response is never simple. I’ve seen firsthand how engaging with a flawed story can sometimes make it worse, drawing more attention and lending it legitimacy it never deserved. I’ve regretted not taking stronger action in the face of an inaccurate story, seeing it shared and accepted as truth by customers and influencers. I’ve also seen the power of silence, how, in some cases, letting a story pass without comment allows it to die a natural death. The challenge is knowing which is which. There’s no algorithm for this, no checklist that guarantees the right call.
The Streisand effect is a cautionary tale for all of us in communications. For context, in 2005 the singer sued a photographer about a photo of her house, collected as one of thousands documenting coastal erosion. At the time of the suit, the photo had been downloaded six times, two of those being by Streisand’s lawyers. After the suit and publicity? Nearly half a million downloads. And as companies and individuals increasingly have strong digital and social signals, it can be easy to accidentally take something we’ve seen but others have not and ensure everyone looks at it.
How to decide? Start with the audience we care most about and look at the intersection between the post or video or article and that audience. If it is a weak connection, then a response might not be needed. Next, consider timing. News and information move fast. If we can’t respond within that first cycle, our response will cause a second cycle. And finally, any response has to conclusively rebut or redirect the thesis. We might not have gotten the first word, but we should for sure have the last.
Wisdom, as Odin learned, is not omniscience, it’s discernment. It’s knowing when to act and when to hold back. It’s building trust and relationships over time, so that when we do speak, our words carry weight. In a world where every company is under a microscope, where every decision is scrutinized and every misstep magnified, the real challenge is not to see everything, but to know what to do with what we see.
Our goal is not to chase every story, but to help our readers make sense of the noise
Signal Magazine exists as a space for reflection, dialogue, and context, not just reaction. Our goal is not to chase every story, but to help our readers make sense of the noise. We invite you to join in the conversation, to help shape what matters, to bring your own wisdom to bear on the challenges we face. In a world of infinite signals, the real art is choosing which ones to amplify and which ones to let pass.
Frank X. Shaw
Chief Communications Officer, Microsoft
Jaron Lanier, the visionary behind virtual reality, has spent decades exploring the promises and pitfalls of the digital world he helped create. A computer scientist, musician and artist, Lanier co-founded the first VR company and popularized the ground-breaking technology. Named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, he’s also the author of bestsellers You Are Not a Gadget and Who Owns the Future? In this exclusive piece for Signal, Lanier offers his tips for how to unlock the power of artificial intelligence.
In early 2025 I received a false diagnosis that I was likely to go blind by spring. I then had to endure a precipitous month until the corrective second opinion finally arrived. As it happens, during that month I developed a new creative obsession that has become precious to me. And that obsession was enabled by AI. One reason I am telling you about all this is that I hope to share some thoughts on how to get the most out of AI, but this confession might also help to undo a common misunderstanding that I am an AI skeptic or opponent. Instead, I am an AI enthusiast who thinks that many of us are thinking about AI wrong.
When I was told I had only a few months left to see, I did all I could to see well. I stared at plants and animals. Went on walks to ogle ravines and sunsets. I lingered on eyes and faces. But I was also obliged to go to the kind of meeting where there isn’t a lot to look at other than equations on a slide.
I grew up in New Mexico and adored native silverwork as a boy, so after my diagnosis I started to buy turquoise rings to adore on my fingers during long discussions about matrix operations. Lots of rings, an absurd number.
What a joy it was to learn at the end of that long month that the first retina guy had gotten it wrong. The reason was a little embarrassing for me. In the early 1980s I had collaborated on what was probably the first surgical simulation, at Stanford Med, with Joe Rosen, a surgeon, and Ann Lasko, an engineer from our startup VPL Research, which was also the first VR company. Then, around the end of the century, I had retinal laser surgery for a minor issue. It turned out that the retina surgeon was familiar with my earlier work and offered to let me briefly operate the laser to put a few of the dots on my retina. (I will not reveal this doctor’s name, obviously.)
I couldn’t help myself, I had to add a little variation, a little art, a wiggle along a circle of laser dots. So there’s a slight tattoo on my retina, which is something all the kids are not doing yet, but any minute. It was this deviation from the norm – which I had neglected to mention to the first retina specialist – that alarmed him.
By the time I got the good news, my appreciation of not only vision, but of jewelry, was supercharged. In a way, the false diagnosis had been a blessing. I was feeling ridiculous buying excessive amounts of jewelry, so I graduated to jewelry maker. Initially this meant simple beading, but then I went on to working with metal clays, then to proper soldering, cutting, and so much hammering and sanding – and then to casting, a laser cutter and a CNC (computerized machining) mill. I developed contacts in Jaipur and Sumatra to source rare gems to set. I got it bad.
Beading, the gateway drug of jewelry making, is as easy as could be, just arranging preexisting, pretty items with holes in them on a wire, but it is philosophically provocative. It is similar to AI! Consider: Is a string of beads creative? All you are doing is combining things other people have made. And yet a string of beads can be expressive. It can be more than the sources. But the value is elusive, in the eye of the beholder. You need a story, a context, to fully appreciate a string of beads. There have been beads for tens of thousands of years, and each work of jewelry art was a story in its time, and an evolving story to us now.
You can’t fully see my bead work without knowing that I thought I was going blind. The story has to be part of the beads for them to radiate light fully. Beads in the abstract are not beads at all.
The way I got my reputation for being an AI skeptic is that I do argue philosophy with my colleagues in our field quite a lot. The usual way of talking about AI is to say it’s the creation of some sort of new entity, and that anything wrong with it, like hallucinations, is a flaw to be fixed in that entity. The entity will eventually become a fully general source of value rather than a specific thing with specific uses. These are common ideas, so common we do not even notice that they are choices, but I do not embrace them.
I prefer to think of AI as the most productive form of human collaboration yet. There isn’t anyone home in an AI, no entity there, just all the people who made data that the AI was trained on. I like this framing better because it makes happy future paths for civilization clearer to imagine than if one thinks of people becoming economically obsolete, but that’s a big picture motivation. Here I want to focus on the personal, intimate level.
Jewelry making is tricky. When I was a boy in New Mexico I asked some Navajo makers if they would show me a little of how to do it, and they were happy to, but warned me it would take years to learn. But that was then. The digital world has not eclipsed physical jewelry but brought it nearer.
Online video is the new universal teacher of physical skills, and was helpful. (Those who follow my work know that I also worry about societal and psychological damage that can be wrought by online platforms, but the positive uses are also real.) Unfortunately, videos are poor at helping you learn details on demand. You can watch someone’s tutorial on how they made a ring, which can be revelatory, but if you are trying to figure out how to solve a specific problem, y
