Science & Tech Quote by Laurie Anderson

The joke lands because it exposes a convenient hypocrisy in the most literal way possible: the critique is powered by the very system it condemns. Laurie Anderson isn’t apologizing for that contradiction; she’s staging it. By itemizing the absurd specifics - 15,000 watts, 18 pieces of gear - she turns the abstract debate about “technology” into a tactile inventory of cords, amps, and dependencies. The numbers are comedic, but they’re also an artist’s way of saying: this isn’t theory, it’s infrastructure.

The subtext is less “technology is bad” than “our relationship to technology is performative.” In the U.S., especially in late-20th-century art and cultural commentary, “critical of technology” often reads as a moral posture: the lone human voice standing against machines, corporations, screens. Anderson punctures that posture by admitting her own immersion. She’s not outside the system looking in; she’s inside it, making the system audible.

Context matters: Anderson came up as electronic tools were becoming inseparable from avant-garde music and mass media at once. Her work has always treated machines as collaborators and as suspects. This line captures that double bind: you can’t meaningfully critique the technological world from some clean, unplugged perch because the perch is wired, too. The real critique, she implies, isn’t rejection. It’s revealing the hidden costs, the power draw, the seductive complexity - and owning your complicity while you speak.