Disasters are post-modern
Passengers on a recent Jet Blue flight were trapped helplessly on a plane ad it circled for hours due to stuck landing gear. There’s nothing special about that except they were able to watch live television feeds of the drama unfolding on the plane. They were participants in their own life or death televised show.
It doesn’t stop there. Friends of mine waiting for Rita to bear down on them in Houston are currently watching the hurricanes progress online minute by minute. They are prepping their cameras to take pictures of the damage and post it on the internet. After hurricane Katrina, maps integrating New Orleans flood data and Google maps sprung up overnight. People didn’t have to wait to know the fate of their homes; they only had to check the proper internet sites.
When disaster strikes, we are slowly becoming our own stars in the drama. Take Todd Beamer, a passenger on the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001. Through a conversation with his wife, he discovered the terrorist that had taken control of the plane meant to use it as a suicide plane, killing everyone on-board. Beamer had to know he would probably die and how he would be remembered.
We’ve gone past the point where we consume the media that is relevant to us. We have become our own stars in an unfolding drama, whether that is on a blog for others to see or on our own desktop for just us to experience.
It doesn’t stop there. Friends of mine waiting for Rita to bear down on them in Houston are currently watching the hurricanes progress online minute by minute. They are prepping their cameras to take pictures of the damage and post it on the internet. After hurricane Katrina, maps integrating New Orleans flood data and Google maps sprung up overnight. People didn’t have to wait to know the fate of their homes; they only had to check the proper internet sites.
When disaster strikes, we are slowly becoming our own stars in the drama. Take Todd Beamer, a passenger on the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001. Through a conversation with his wife, he discovered the terrorist that had taken control of the plane meant to use it as a suicide plane, killing everyone on-board. Beamer had to know he would probably die and how he would be remembered.
We’ve gone past the point where we consume the media that is relevant to us. We have become our own stars in an unfolding drama, whether that is on a blog for others to see or on our own desktop for just us to experience.
posted by mc at 10:00 AM
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