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An interesting article on the loss of silence.

First, a clarification:

Silence is something you assume you will always be able to find if you need it. All you have to do is drive far enough in the right direction, trek through quiet fields or woods, or dive into the sea's belly. For true silence is not noiselessness. As audio ecologist Gordon Hempton defines it, silence is "the complete absence of all audible mechanical vibrations, leaving only the sounds of nature at her most natural. Silence is the presence of everything, undisturbed."

Cool anecdote:

At college I majored in botany, and I was outdoors in vegetation all the time. But I did not really start thinking of silence until I was a graduate student in plant pathology, when I was driving from Seattle to Madison, Wis., and decided to sleep in a cornfield for the night. I didn't want to pay for a hotel. As I lay there I heard crickets, and rolling thunder in the background, which captivated me. The thunderstorm came, and I truly listened. The storm passed on, and as I lay there, drenched, the only thought in my mind was, how could I be 27 years old and never have truly listened before? I then took my microphone and tape recorder and went everywhere, obsessively listening—freight trains, hobos—it was a flood of sensation. I realized how we need to hear to survive—in evolution, earlids never developed, but eyelids did. And to those who know that true listening is worship, silence is one of nature's most transformative sermons. I am filled with gratitude to have heard it. Max Ehrmann was right-on when he wrote: "Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence."