Vulnerbilities of Interconnection

Mon Sep 16 18:26:43 UTC 2002

On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> > The internet sucked as a means of getting information on 9/11. I spent
> > about 20 minutes hitting every news site I could think of, and they had
> > all tanked. I set an away msg on IM:
> > "Internet news sucks, I'm going to watch CNN."
>
> There are several ways why "internet news" wasn't as good as TV news:
>
> 1. Using an infrastructure that is built for many-to-many communication
>    for few-to-many communication is problematic
>
> 2. Look at the budgets for online and TV news
>
> 3. This type of situation doesn't lend itself well to typing in the news
>
> What the net did do, was permit people to communicate while the phone
> network suffered from massive congestion.

I had a good experience using the Internet for news on 9/11, because I used
it in a way that fit the model.. I didn't bother trying to load cnn.com or
whatever, but rather.. I sat in IRC, talking to people whom I trust to
various degrees, who were in turn watching every conceiveable news source
available, they transcribed, and summerized, some setup mp3 streams of the
EMS/Police radios from DC and NYC, other people read old news sources
online. People at ground zero went outside and took pictures, setup
webcams, etc..

I have to say that I doubt I missed anything... So sure, the internet
sucks as a 1:1 replacement for TV (at least without multicast)... but so
what? I think my experience was better... I wouldn't have bothered wasting
my time drooling over the TV anyways... welcome to News 2.0.