• by Tom Hespos , September 12, 2006

We don't always choose our defining moments. Sometimes they just happen.

My parents probably never wanted to remember in minute detail where they were and what they were doing when President Kennedy was shot. My granddad probably feels similarly about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I feel the same way about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, to the point where it's now five years later and I still can't bring myself to visit Ground Zero.

This Monday, CNN reran its 9/11 coverage on Pipeline, its video stream service. Bloggers discussed the attacks and how they helped to give rise to the blogging culture. Content Web sites posted coverage of memorial services. Everybody seemed to have a way of reflecting on the attacks and how they affect us today.

Personally, I prefer to dwell on the positive. To me, that meant looking back at the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and how online communities responded as news of the attacks reverberated throughout the world. I searched for the threads from that morning on my favorite message board and marveled at how the Internet became an organic extension of the connections between people--not talking heads and politicians, but real human beings like you and me.

Upon learning of the attacks, people on my favorite message board immediately set up check-in threads for users from New York. Cellular and landline service was a mess on 9/11, and for quite a few of those who frequented that board, posting a message was the only way to let loved ones know they were safe. In a couple of cases, posters asked someone in another part of the country to dial up their loved ones to help get the message through.

Think about what that means for a second. Someone who escaped the attacks and needed to get that all-important message to his family turned to someone he had never met face- to-face to help him do it. A similar check-in thread was posted to my alma mater's online community, and community members were alerted to its presence by an e-mail. A friend of mine several hundred miles from New York City let the community know I was okay when I managed to get an e-mail to him.

Similar things happened on discussion lists I belong to. Yesterday morning, I browsed old e-mail and list archives to remind myself exactly how things unfolded on 9/11. As soon as news of the attacks started to spread, e-mail and discussion lists helped to fill the void left by overloaded telecoms and conflicting information from the news media. People posted unfiltered eyewitness accounts. Manhattan residents offered guest beds and couches to the stranded as the major arteries in and out of the city were shut down. People made their best attempts to contact people no one had heard from yet, and updated the list on their progress in tracking down the unaccounted for.

I marvel at the various ways people used technology to connect with one another--in very human ways--in the face of the terrorist attacks. It is that humanity that is our first clue to understanding the Internet. Online communities were meant to connect us, not to keep us at arm's length from one another. They are an extension of our humanity, not a mere symbol of it. To me, the compassion and outreach in the wake of the attacks is a constant reminder of that fact.