Being essentially neutral, these technologies have a huge social impact but are unable to change the humans themselves, only creating a kind of feedback loop that amplifies their inherent qualities to the extreme. The resulting rifts between the technological capabilities and society’s preparedness for them allow again and again to concentrate almost unlimited power in the hands of a few random people who are unable to use it for the benefit of anyone but themselves.
The piece is dedicated to Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, the creator of thermonuclear fusion technology, human rights activist, and dissident, who devoted his whole life to bridging this rift.
A fragment of a recently declassified recording of the soviet thermonuclear weapon’s first test, the very fact of the publication of which became another move in the information war, goes through a series of digital-to-analog transformations through various surveillance and broadcasting devices and audiovisual feedback systems, fusing abstract and concrete sonic and visual images.