Healthy areas that are richest in information are those areas in the wild where we can get all the information that's available to us within our human hearing range. The most valuable information throughout human evolution has been faint sounds. We tend to think in our modern world that if it's loud, if it grabs our attention, it's important. We get a lot of that in advertising. But in nature, it's the faintest sound that's important; it has determined, in the past of our ancestors, perhaps, if they will live or die. Faint sounds are the earliest clues of newly arriving information.

I work in the same style as classic landscape photographers. You find the right perspective, and then you wait until the light is right. I do the same. I find the right location, and then I wait for the sound, the atmosphere to be right, and for the space to be revealed.

An acoustic ecologist is a listener who is aware that sound is information. It's information because it's created by events, events produce sound, and that sound has all kinds of data, if you will, that conveys what event occurred, what the materials were, whether it was sudden, slow, loud, in what direction. And because it is information, we can think of it as a message. The acoustic ecologist studies information systems that are both intentional and sometimes wild.

Quiet is the element of discerning what is essential.

Most people think visual information is more important than aural information - like, what's this big deal about sound? And why should I bother to listen, rather than look? And here are the facts: there are blind species, in the backs of the caves, the bottoms of the oceans. It's not essential on planet Earth to be able to see, to be a species. But there are no deaf animal species. You have to be able to hear, or you won't get the information you need in order to survive.

I would say that to listen is to become aware. To become truly informed. You will discover whatever you do.

If you're listening to a symphony, you're getting all the information, including the audience around you, the delay from the sides of the concert hall, the whole thing. If one of those musicians is sharply out of tune or starts to play a different piece of music than all the others in the orchestra, you immediately notice. When you analyze systems by listening, you can just listen, and you can tell whether the system is healthy or unhealthy. What I've created for you is a perfect model of how we should be listening to our stock market, rather than trying to see it graphically.