Master copies and the temptation — "But not so much for content,’…"
‘But not so much for content,’ Steeply said. ‘Input/Output’s exhaustive testing. Flatto’s got them working on conditions and environments for possible nonlethal viewing. Certain departments in Virginia, the developing theory is that it’s holography.’ […] ‘The filmmaker’d been a cutting-edge optics man. Holography, diffraction. He’d used holography a couple times before, and in the context of a kind of filmed assault on the viewer. He was of the Hostile School or some such shit.’
Context
The plan's one-liner lands here: the first sustained technical theory of the samizdat, and it's an optics theory. The U.S. government's best guess at the lethal mechanism runs straight through JOI's professional pedigree — holography, diffraction, prior form in "filmed assault on the viewer" (Steeply's garbled version of the après-garde's anticonfluential hostility: "the Hostile School or some such shit"). The Entertainment is being reverse-engineered as a lens problem, not a content problem — which is exactly how its maker would have wanted it approached.