Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.

This remark is associated with Paul Valéry’s reflections on the technological mediation of art and perception in the early 20th century, when electrification, telephony, radio, and mechanical reproduction were rapidly reshaping everyday life. In that setting Valéry imagines cultural “distribution” becoming infrastructural—like utilities piped into the home—so that images and sounds could be summoned on demand with minimal physical effort. The passage is commonly cited as a prescient anticipation of broadcast media and, later, on-demand audiovisual technologies, framed through an analogy to modern household services (water, gas, electricity) that had recently become normalized in urban life.

Valéry imagines a near future in which images and sounds are delivered to private homes as effortlessly as modern utilities. The comparison to water, gas, and electricity stresses not only technical distribution networks but also the normalization of constant, on-demand supply. His emphasis on “a simple movement of the hand” anticipates interfaces that make access nearly frictionless, turning complex industrial systems into an almost invisible extension of everyday life. The passage is often read as an early, striking prefiguration of broadcast media, recorded sound, and ultimately screen-based, gesture-driven consumption—along with the cultural shift such convenience brings: art and information become ubiquitous, instantly summonable, and potentially more transient.