Fear of the New continued...

Passing through the industrial era the technological advances stack and accumulate atop each other to project us from the last and towards the next. And yet many complex achievements are collections of parts that can still be understood in a half hour physics lesson. The trouble comes when advances have stood on too many shoulders of too many giants, that technical, nanotechnological, biological developments are so far up the ladder that it escapes more and more a common, visceral understanding of the nature of things. Primitive human intuition and society's profound collective memory remain short of computing the deep sources of knowledge. How is one, or infact all, supposed to traverse these distances in our lifetimes? Will the very latest ideas being testest, in time, become understood via simple diagrams?



To relate this to an initial thought was to see the our relationship with nuclear energy, and it's common perception over time. Once, heralded as an omnipotent saviour, again as an unstable component of a fragile and dependent system, and the source of much wealth, power, debt and illness to many depending on what sources you engage with. We are fickle and can still be swayed, but the work of convincing lies upon a select number of voices, with the holes in the public consciousness susceptible to propaganda. Nuclear energy relies on a smaller, more educated workforce - although the use of the word workforce seems somewhat stretched- to produce vastly amplified amount of power compare to other means. This inner circle of exclusive knowledge casts more shadows than answers.

Energy is synonymous with movement, yet the timeless static forms of nuclear stations do much to pacify the potency of its output.
Does a nuclear power station represent its activities? How?