9/11 Communication

I’ve been thinking about the 18th anniversary of 9/11 a number of days in advance. Hard to believe it’s been so many years now — sending thoughts, prayers, and remembrance to all those impacted in the NYC area and beyond.

It was a hard day for any American, and as NYC had been my only second home outside of Texas, it was a particularly hard day. I spent much of it here in Austin scrambling to reach good friends and colleagues any way I could — long distance, AOL IM, the phone. Broadcast news was still king, and Peter Jennings did an epic 60 hours in his anchor chair at ABC News to provide much needed information to the country.

It was a different tech landscape in 2001. There were no iPhones, yet Blackberries were a communications lifeline. The New York Times pulled graphics from its front page to hurry up the page load. Pagers were still relevant, as were pay phones.

To be clear, I remember and write about the technology because, on that fateful day, for many it was all that connected us to the people we cared about.

In this age of big tech skepticism and so-called fake news, it would be good for us to remember that it still does.

WIRED has a full write-up here.