The same poet who will smile at the pedantry of an organized rhythm and laugh off the fatuity of rhyme may suddenly become a little indignant when you suggest that the liberation of poetry from sound all together is only the necessary extension of an unified aesthetic philosophy. The lyrical reliance on sound as the basis for language, meaning, and eloquence is the final archaism of poetry, a holdover from the old rude world of the grunt and the belch. Wavelength-division multiplexing, full-spectrum transfer, micro-mirror technologies presage a silent, luminous network for the generation and exchange of ideas. A few poets will continue to sing in the darkness. People will go hungry. But not for a failing of the light. We have long chattered about the advent of a new civilization, a truly enlightened world. We have only now glimpsed it.