caerula's Diaryland Diary

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news

It's amazing how we can get news and information 24/7, but when there's a big story and you're at work without access to radio or television, and trying to get into MSNBC or CNN for updates on said Big Story, it's nearly impossible because of all the traffic on the servers. I'm just as cut off from the World Trade Center plane crash as if I had no internet access.

It's made me think about how we've gotten so used to instant gratification via the Internet. Two hundred years ago, it might be months before news filtered through. A hundred years ago, news might be delayed days or weeks, and 50 years ago it was in the paper once a day. Think back 10 or 20 years ago, and news was the morning and evening paper, or on tv at noon, 5, and 11. Then came the 24 news networks, where you might have to wait a few minutes to get the info you want, but you know it will pop up sooner or later. Then came the internet, and all you have to do is go to one of the news sites and you can get more info than you ever thought you needed, with sidebars and numbers and graphs and human interest. But when it's a breaking story, when it's happening right now, the news websites are all but useless. I've been able to get nothing more than a brief two-paragraph story off of Yahoo. Weird.

9:41 a.m. - 2001-09-11

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