“In 1969 . . . [part of] a special edition of Marshall McLuhan’s Dew-Line Newsletter . . . [was] a pack of cards, the “Distant Early Warning Deck.”. . . Each card has a quotation from a different thinker or artist. The five of diamonds is dedicated to [John] Cage, and bears the following: ‘[S]ilence is all the sounds of the environment at once.’”

—Charlie Gere, from Art, Time and Technology, 2006.