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.

The earth has continued to change, from rapid climatic changes that have caused the glaciers and the ice sheets to basically bulldoze the landscape and cause species compression in the tropics and cause mass species extinction - you know, all these huge changes. In terms of evolution, every species is doomed to eventual extinction. The natural world is constantly changing. So, to deal with "environmental problems," in quotes, totally misses the issue. That is not the way we want to define our problem if we're going to find our solution.

The most important thing for our species is, before it speaks, to listen to its environment. That has a higher priority in any species' survival. We need to be listening to our environment - in other words, restoring the quiet - not just to our natural areas, but also to towns like Portland, Maine.

Often how you define the problem will determine whether or not you're able to find a real solution.

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.

Noise pollution is basically defined as the presence of simple information that makes it impossible to hear all the other more delicate - and often more important - information. Noise pollution creates, if you will, dumb environments. Our industrial areas, many of our downtown urban areas, are dumb acoustic environments. Very simple, very loud, often unhealthy.

How are we going to know what sounds are important before we've even heard those sounds? It's an absurd question. The only thing we can say is that we're going to base it on our past experience. In other words, modern listening doesn't inform us of anything new. It simply keeps us in the past.