I've been reading Dave Winer's blog from 9/11, something I do most years on this day. Thanks to Dave's efforts, the world sat up and took notice of what blogging can be and do that day.
Just like with it did with Twitter in May 2008 when a massive earthquake hit China and Scoble was collating first-hand, on-the-ground news via tweets.
The saying goes that the internet never forgets but the number of sites Winer linked to that no longer exist tells another story. It's depressing that such slices of history, people's thoughts and experiences of catastrophic events, have disappeared from the public domain in such a short time.
9/11 was one of those events when, if you were old enough to be paying attention to the world, you remember where you were and what you were doing. It's crazy to think that it was twenty years ago. I was at work on what was just an ordinary day until the news of the first plane hit– then time seemed to stand still. We were all transfixed by the news footage coming out of New York. I remember that the phones stopped ringing which never happened, everyone else was obviously just as stunned as us. The normal events of the day no longer seemed important.
People say the world changed that day – maybe it did but by how much I'm not sure. You only have to look at recent events in Afghanistan to realise it can't have changed that much, or that at least some of the change was temporary. As much as we hate to admit it, maybe some things just can't be changed and, given time, return to their natural equilibrium despite our best efforts.
But we can hope, and remember.
