"The world has just got more dangerous because the things we use have got more dangerous"
About this Quote
Danger isn’t arriving from outer space; it’s leaking out of our own toolboxes. Pierre Schaeffer, better known for turning recorded sound into a new musical language, frames modern risk as a design problem disguised as fate: the world feels nastier because our instruments of living now carry heavier consequences. The line is almost disarmingly plain, which is the point. It refuses the comforting story that “the world” is an independent villain. Schaeffer locates danger in use - in human agency, in systems, in the everyday intimacy between hand and device.
Coming from a composer who pioneered musique concrete and worked in radio engineering, the subtext lands hard: technology doesn’t just amplify power, it amplifies error. When your materials are simple, mistakes stay local. When your materials scale - electricity grids, broadcast networks, industrial chemicals, nuclear energy, mass transport - failures travel. Accidents become headlines; misjudgments become disasters; a single actor can reach millions.
There’s also a sly critique of modern innocence. “The things we use” sounds domestic, almost cozy, which makes the threat more unnerving. Schaeffer suggests we’ve normalized proximity to high-stakes machinery the way we normalize background noise: by habituation. The quote reads like a warning from inside the control room, where you can see how easily a tool meant for connection, efficiency, or beauty can be repurposed, miscalibrated, or simply pushed too far.
In the Cold War century Schaeffer lived through, this wasn’t abstract. It was the lived shift from human-scale harm to infrastructural, planetary risk - the dangerous intimacy of progress.
Coming from a composer who pioneered musique concrete and worked in radio engineering, the subtext lands hard: technology doesn’t just amplify power, it amplifies error. When your materials are simple, mistakes stay local. When your materials scale - electricity grids, broadcast networks, industrial chemicals, nuclear energy, mass transport - failures travel. Accidents become headlines; misjudgments become disasters; a single actor can reach millions.
There’s also a sly critique of modern innocence. “The things we use” sounds domestic, almost cozy, which makes the threat more unnerving. Schaeffer suggests we’ve normalized proximity to high-stakes machinery the way we normalize background noise: by habituation. The quote reads like a warning from inside the control room, where you can see how easily a tool meant for connection, efficiency, or beauty can be repurposed, miscalibrated, or simply pushed too far.
In the Cold War century Schaeffer lived through, this wasn’t abstract. It was the lived shift from human-scale harm to infrastructural, planetary risk - the dangerous intimacy of progress.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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