Surfacing Signal: Finding Meaning in the Age of Noise

“That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art”—Walter Benjamin 1963        

Benjamin warned that mechanical reproduction would strip art of its aura, or its singular presence in time and space. Today, in an AI saturated world, that warning is no longer theoretical. Content is infinite, but attention is scarce. Aura has shifted: it is no longer defined by the act of creating, but by the discipline of discerning. This article redefines aura for the AI age using Steve Jobs’ concept of signal vs. noise, and Kevin O’Leary’s framing of aura as composure, clarity, and credibility. Together they point toward a new economics of meaning: cultivating signal in the flood of noise. 

Aura in the AI Age

Today AI can replicate style, mimic famous voices, and generate original-seeming works on demand. But when everything is reproducible, the ritual of making is easily drowned in noise. Meaning that stems from encountering original human expression becomes scarce.

The task is to build aura by developing the discipline to distinguish what is authentic, insightful, and worth attention amid an algorithmic deluge.

Kevin O’Leary recalls that Steve Jobs mastered the “signal-to-noise-ratio” long before it became a silicon valley cliche. For Jobs, signal wasn’t about lofty visions, it was the three to five urgent tasks that had to be completed in a single day. Everything else, no matter how tempting, was noise. Jobs’ genius was perceptual discipline, stripping away distraction so that signal could shine. 

O’Leary extends this logic with his own definition of aura using the context of a shark tank pitch: the ability to hold composure during silence and pressure, defining your product under 90 seconds, and grounding your pitch in data. Taken together, Jobs and O’Leary highlight the modern form of aura: focus + clarity + credibility. In this AI age, this triad isn’t optional, it’s how leadership cuts through the churn, and creates trust in a world drowning in noise. 

The Human Process

I’ve spent over a decade working at a top music house for advertising. We deliver custom pieces of music to agencies for commercials, film, and TV. Some pieces take many iterations before complete, but that is part of the value we provide. These days, an agency can subscribe to a music library for $15 a month and get all the music they need for their pitches. So why would they pay us tens of thousands for a custom score? Our specialty is the human process of shaping a bespoke product that adds focus, clarity, and credibility to their message. 

We work hand in hand with clients to make sure their media doesn’t just sound polished, but resonates with meaning. In a world of endless background music, it isn’t production alone that matters, it’s the ability to surface the signal of a story, and that is what gives the work its aura.

This principle extends beyond music. In an economy of cheap, frictionless production, the bottleneck is no longer making content but helping people notice and find meaning. As AI intensifies this flip, generating “content” that is optimized for scrolling rather than disruption, it paradoxically makes human imperfections radiate with new intensity. The emotions of a human voice framed in an emotional moment resonate more than ever before.

Imperfect Presence

Consider U2’s iconic Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show in 2002. In the aftermath of September 11, they stepped onto that stage not as a flawless spectacle, but as an urgent moment of collective empathy. As the names of 9/11 victims projected across the Superdome, Bono opened his jacket to reveal an American Flag. The performance itself was far from perfect, yet it was profoundly human and full of aura. Watching the grainy video two decades later sent goosebumps right up my neck, and I felt transported into that moment of time. That presence resonated, sparking a 142% surge in album sales, evidence that perception of meaning not overproduction carries real weight. 

In the age of AI abundance, perfection is the baseline. Signal isn’t just about creation, it’s about presence. Aura isn’t dead–it’s just hiding the rarest currency we now have: human attention. 

Defining Signal in the AI Age

Today, being technically perfect or visually striking doesn’t qualify as signal. The internet is already full of that. True signal now emerges from a fusion of: information + trust + timing.

Intentional framing, identities that deliver, and the moment message reaches a soul that wants to listen are essential. Strip away any of those components and you’re left with noise. 

 AI complicates the balance. It can swamp us with noise, or help surface anomalies that carry signal. But without a human layer of meaning, without embodying Jobs’ discipline to prioritize signal, AI risks amplifying noise and reducing aura. 

The Human Role

This is where humans reassert their value. We become the re-injectors of aura: 

• Curators, who sift the flood and choose what deserves attention.
• Storytellers, who connect individual works to a broader narrative arc. 
• Trust nodes, whose reputations filter the signal for their communities. 

If the scarce resource in this economy is meaning, a brand doesn’t win by outproducing an algorithm, it wins by framing its output so that it resonates. So that it feels a part of something larger. Think of how a well-placed song in a commercial can move us, not because the song itself is rare, but because of the cultural moment and emotional stakes that surround it. A piece of music we produced for Colgate still draws comments years later because it carried more than sound, it carried meaning. 

Aura has shifted toward the human capacity to create context for ourselves and others. In an environment where machines flood the world with raw material, it is our ability to frame, to narrate, and to connect that transforms content into signal. 

The AI Role

When Benjamin wrote about film and photography he noted that these technologies didn’t just capture the world, they reshaped perception itself. The camera’s “mechanical eye” lingered on details the human eye might skip, slowed time through editing, and reframed everyday life into something mythic. Reproduction didn’t merely duplicate reality, it reorganized how culture experienced it. 

AI is a vastly more evolved mechanical eye. It doesn’t simply record or reproduce, it predicts. Generative systems create infinite variations, while recommender engines decide which of those variations reach us, in what order, and under what framing. Where Benjamin saw film collapsing time and space, we now see algorithms collapsing entire oceans of possibility into a feed designed for a single viewer. 

Left unchecked, it’s an engine of noise, endlessly churning out technically flawless but forgettable images, songs, and scripts. But when guided, AI becomes a taste machine. It can comb through the flood of outputs to: 

Surface the rare artifacts that actually resonate. 

• Detect cultural trends in their first moments of emergence. 
• Spot patterns in audience engagement that human intuition alone might miss. 

Take Netflix. It doesn’t just recommend shows, it dynamically reframes them, tailoring thumbnails to each user. This isn’t production of new content, but sequencing perception. Where Benjamin described the camera reorganizing time,  AI now reorganizes desire. 

Sequencing perception is not the same as creating meaning. Algorithms can shuffle the deck infinitely, but they cannot tell us why a story matters now. That interpretive act still belongs to humans. The lesson is clear: AI can surface, filter, and anticipate, but it cannot consecrate. It cannot confer aura on its own. 

Those who master the balance, who choose what deserves attention and frame it with urgency, will not drown in noise. They will teach audiences how to listen differently, to see differently, to feel differently. In this economy aura is not lost to machines; it is amplified by the human hand that decides when and how it shines. 

Final Notes

Meaning requires discipline. For Benjamin, aura lived in the unique presence of art. For Jobs, signal lived in the ruthless stripping away of noise. Both remind us that signal isn’t discovered, it is chosen.

In the AI abundance economy, perfection is baseline. What matters is how we frame, curate, and elevate the rare signals that deserve attention. That is the new aura. 

• For creators: define your daily three signals. 
• For brands: curate context, not just content. 
• For leaders: embody composure, clarity, and credibility when the pressure mounts. 

AI can automate perception, but it cannot consecrate meaning. That task remains human. Those who cultivate the discipline of signal will not only cut through the noise, they will teach each other how to see, how to listen, and how to feel differently in the age of machines.

SOURCES:

1. Walter Benjamin — The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (orig. 1936; English trans. 1963).
2. Steven Bartlett, interview with Kevin O’Leary, Diary of a CEO, Episode “Kevin O’Leary on Signal-to-Noise Ratio” (podcast), July 1, 2025.
3. U2, “U2’s Halftime Show Performance on Super Bowl XXXVI” (broadcast February 3, 2002). 

Colgate “Courageous Smiles” advertisement with Big Foote Music + Sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMcC11d-V_U