Marshall McLuhan was right. If the typewriter gives the artist a personal printing press, the electric color memory computer gives the artist the personal instant publishing house. The computer program has become the new American poem. One of the best definitions I have ever come upon is that of R.P.Blackmur, the great British critic of literature. That definition will serve.
Language is the most advanced evolutionary feature of the brain.
Of the many functions and operating systems of nervous tissue, language processing is the most complex and the latest in development among animals. The study of language, then, is the study of mind and it naturally reflects the operations of the brain. A poem is a piece of artificial intelligence. Whether the human being uses a natural or an artificial language doesn't matter. Whether the poem is sung by a bard with a lyre or whether it is sung by a teenager on a color video screen, it is the input and the output and the audience that matters.