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| Talk,
Graham Bower,
02:00:00,
01 October 2001 | |
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It is said that everyone who was alive in 1963, when President John F Kennedy was murdered, remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. I wasn’t alive then, but I do remember when I heard the news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. I remember my immediate feeling was one of surprise. It was the last thing I expected to hear when I woke up that Sunday morning. Of course a feeling of sadness followed, but as things took on a turn for the sentimental and then Elton piped up, the whole thing frankly became a little embarrassing, and the real tragedy, the death of a person, was lost in all the hysteria.
I will never forget where I was when I heard about the World Trade Center disaster. I was on the Internet. A colleague, who knew I was a fan of skyscrapers, called me to tell me that a plane had crashed into the WTC. I assumed it must be light aircraft. A bi-plane had crashed into the side of the Empire State Building once, and had done little damage. The WTC was so enormous, so impressive, so magnificent, it was impossible to believe that anything could do substantial damage to a building like that.
Soon there was a crowd around my laptop, and we were all watching live streaming video of events in New York. Sure enough, there was smoke rising from one of the towers, making it look more like a chimney than a skyscraper, but it was still hard to believe that much damage had been done. As we watch the first tower crumble, everyone became silent. Then everyone started talkingÂ…
“Imagine what Bush is going to do now”
“Do you think it was the Palestinians?”
“You’ll remember the moment this happened – a bit like with JFK”
But soon, everyone started saying the same thing.
“This changes everything, nothing will be the same again.”
I went home. I couldn’t stay at work any longer. My mind was reeling – struggling to comprehend what we had just witnessed. The heart was torn out of the capital city of the world, and we, as global citizens, watched the whole event on the World Wide Web.
The Web used to make me feel very optimistic. The ability to freely share information across the globe is such a liberating thing. During the dotcom boom years, people talked about the death of distance – the world was becoming a smaller place thanks to information technology. And now I’m wondering how things have gone so wrong that the terrorists who committed theses acts believed that they were morally justified. The distance between peoples has never seemed further.
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