This paper, in celebration of Pierre Schaeffer's hundredth birthday, examines the difficulties hindering a complete diffusion of the ideas of this French electroacoustic music inventor and theorist. In particular, Schaeffer's tabular and graphical thinking are analysed and critiqued in order to pave the way for a renewed understanding of his theory. In the second and third parts of the paper, work still to be done and a few musical cases are discussed.