Reflecting on Nine Eleven
Posted on September 11, 2003 at 8:33 am | No Comments
Two years ago, at 8:55 am, I was pulling into a Newton, Mass. parking garage, listening to a breaking news report on NPR. Sketchy details report a plane just hit the WTC, but “no further details were available”. Knee-jerk assumption was a small plane, a single engine prop, a freak accident. Turn off the car, walk into work, check out the television in the game room.
Adam is already there, watching the live CNN feed. “Wow, looks like it was a pretty big plane”. “Damn, that’s a lot of smoke”. More co-workers gather, chatting, speculating, wondering. It’s 9:03. We watch the second plane hit. We all know what it means. Some can’t look away from the TV, others just look at each other.
The people at Turning Point Software (because that’s what it will always be called to me, not Meta-Vant-Whatever) were good friends, maybe the closest team of co-workers I’ll ever know, but that day gave us a connection that can’t be matched.
It’s 9:05 and I call Amie at home, tell her to turn on the TV. She can’t believe it. “What the hell’s going on?”
I jump on the net, hit my first surfing stop of every day, the Warren Ellis Forum on Delphi. Joe has already started a thread.
“Holy shit:”, “This is just horrifying”, “fucking unreal”, “Are we under attack?”, “I HEARD IT. I HEARD IT.”, “I could feel it shake.”, “Reports of an explosion at the Pentagon”, “We just lost the World Trade Center.”, “this is really scary.”, “MY BUILDING, WHERE I SHOULD BE RIGHT NOW, NO LONGER EXISTS.”, “Glad you’re alive.”, “I want to go home.”, “I am trembling as I write this.”, “All of our thoughts are with you.”, “I’m fucking numb.”, “What a terrible, terrible day.”
In that one-of-a-kind virtual hangout, I found real-time reaction, international perspective, first-hand accounts, paranoid speculation, blind anger, heartfelt concern, but most of all, a sort of long-distance communal connection. A new kind of comfort among strangers. I’ve never felt anything like that, and in retrospect, it was a pretty powerful source of hope of on such a dark, dark day.
Today I’ll be donating blood at Fenway Park (starts at 11am… if you’re in Boston, head on down), and this evening I’ll be getting together with my friends and former co-workers from Turning Point. We’ll be gathering, as we hopefully will every year on this day, at the restaurant across the street from our old building. Reflecting on the way things used to be, and appreciating what we have now.
The Last Blog on the Flash Mob
Posted on September 10, 2003 at 12:45 pm | No Comments
So summer’s pretty much over and the flash mob phenom is, as expected, fading. Or is it?
Yeah, yeah. I know you’re sick of mobs, I’m sick of mobs, we’re all sick of mobs, etc. etc. I went to one, blogged it up, got a bajillion site-hits, got interviewed, got bored, turned anti, turned apathetic, got trolled, got insulted, then just plain forgot. Ran the gamut of the experience in just a few hours of total time spent. So here’s another five minutes for ya …
This new story on Wired News details not just the disruption of a mob attempt in Prague, but the beating of two participants, including a Czech journalist attempting to photograph the event.
There are probably some bitter, hipper-than-thou surfers out there who just started chuckling. The anti-mobsters, the flashhackers, that tool over in South Korea. I can see ya, looking down your noses, chortling in defense of the ‘common working man’ who has his day disrupted by this ‘pointless’ behavior. Laugh it up, fuzzballs.
Y’see, this story’s different. This mob did have a point. It was one of the first mission-mobs, organized “as a protest against local laws that prohibit the taking of photos or videos in supermarkets and malls.” Seems they were out to prove something, and boy did they ever. If they were lookin’ for attention, they got a couple of fists full. Looks like in addition to spotlighting the silly anti-camera laws, they revealed a apparantly nasty trend of brutal Czech security guards. Check out the story, visit the links, see the photos. They’re thug-tastic.
The Wired story also tells of New Zealand’s first flash mob, which had 200 people moo-ing at a Burger King. A not-so-subtle vegetarian message, for sure. What that mob also showed that you can’t assume businesses and its employees are disturbed by the so-called ‘reality hacks’. The BK’s manager, when asked his opinion of the mob after he’d cooked a bunch of extra food assuming a bus had shown up, reportedly said “the loss was quite limited and there were no hard feelings”. Then he invited the entire mob back for lunch.
Read the second page of the article and you even get a Howard Dean mention. It all ties together, y’see?