"Until everybody in the United States has the ability to spend three or four hours in front of the computer every night, it can't be as effective," she says. "I think it's already as effective as it can be--with a certain group of people: the intelligentsia, the art-and-entertainment world communities. But, in terms of moving a mass market, more people have to have access to the hardware, and right now they don't."
In conquering her own technophobia, Loader found computers liberating. And with this new sense of empowerment, she hoped to use the digital medium to reach a new, younger generation with the message of The Atomic Cafe. More importantly, she was on a higher, personal mission. Public Shelter would archive the hundreds of recently declassified documents concerning nuclear secrets, like those detailing radiation experiments on people, so that the American public would always have access to the information should policies change and the documents become reclassified.
That isn't as far-fetched a possibility as it might seem. While producing The Atomic Cafe, Loader and the Raffertys had free access to virtually all the propaganda films in the various military archives by simply asking to see them. Today (in part due to The Atomic Cafe), you can't simply walk in to the nearest base or government archive and ask to see a film. You have to negotiate a bureaucratic web, involving filing Freedom of Information Act paperwork, in order to see anything.
Loader hopes that Public Shelter will help make further barriers to the information pointless. Yet, with the CD-ROM in the hands of fewer than 2,000 people, Loader's original intent for the project--securing control of these nuclear documents for the public--has turned up short.
The Atomic Age and its dilemmas never went away and remain stubbornly relevant in the Information Age. For her part, Loader continues as a persistent player in multiple media. She travels the world to speak about nuclear issues, is curating media workshops for the multimedia, interactive venture of PBS's POV television series, and writes about cultural issues in a weekly column for the Net, "World Wide Wench" (at the Public Shelter Website).
As for her future with CD-ROM, there's the possibility of a project with the producers of a recent "acclaimed documentary about basketball" that she says she is not at liberty to name (presumably the Academy-snubbed Hoop Dreams). And the cross-media project concerning the WWI woman aviators still beckons.
Loader hasn't given up on Public Shelter and hopes that a publisher will come forward to help fulfill its mission. But she realizes now that a message is only as effective as the medium that delivers it. So things are going to be different with her next CD-ROM, this independent filmmaker and pop-media maverick has decided.
"I'm going to form a relationship with a publisher early on in the process, instead of waiting until the thing is done and then try to sell it. One of the main things I've learned is that publishers want to have input into what the shape of the program is. So, next time, I'm going to be a good little soldier and play the game a little bit."
She considers these words more carefully for a moment. "I'm not saying I'm going to work within the system--I would never do that. I'm going to try to work on the margins of the system, instead of completely outside it. How does that sound? Sensible, doesn't it? That's not something you'd normally hear coming from my mouth.
