Day: September 11, 2021

It’s a Different World

Fandango35 Comments

As I was reflecting back on the tragedy of 9/11, I was struck by how different our world is today from what it was just twenty years ago. Especially from a technology perspective.

In September 2001, nobody had a smartphone, unless you considered the earliest generation of BlackBerry phones to be “smart.” And if you wanted to take a picture back then, you needed to have a dedicated device known as a camera and you had to load the camera with film and send it out to be developed. Now photography, except for the old school purists, is done mostly on smartphones and it’s virtually all digital.

If you wanted to access the internet — known then as the World Wide Web — in the days before broadband was widely available, you had to connect via what was known as “dial-up,” which used a telephone landline to connect to the internet. This meant that you could only use either the phone line or the internet at the same time. Prehistoric, right?

Social media didn’t really exist back then. In 2001 Microsoft released MSN Messenger and Friendster was in its infancy. No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, or Tik Tok. No YouTube. Not even WordPress, which started up in May 2003. Texting wasn’t even a word in 2001. And if you said the word “emoji,” people would think you were speaking a foreign language.

In 2001, you could subscribe to Netflix and have DVDs of movies delivered to your home. You remember DVDs right? They superseded video cassette tapes that you would get at your local video store. Remember? Netflix’s streaming service was introduced six years after 9/11. And that flat screen, high def TV you probably watch Netflix on were just introduced in the late 1990s and had barely scratched the surface of television sales.

Google was a relative newcomer to the search engine field. The most popular search engines at the time were Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite. I even remember using Ask Jeeves!

In 2001, biometrics like facial recognition were in their infancy. Now every smartphone uses facial recognition to unlock it. Alexa and Siri were girl’s names. “The cloud” was a weather term.

Tracking someone by satellite via street cameras or GPS on their phone still seemed like science fiction. If you needed to figure out a route to get from point A to point B, you needed a physical map. The Garmin Street Pilot was one of the first standalone GPS devices, and that was introduced in the late 90s. It wasn’t until 2005 that Google Maps was introduced as a desktop utility and as a smartphone app in 2008.

Security at airports was mostly privately run, and may have included walking through a metal detector. Passengers could take baseball bats and blades up to 4 inches long on the plane. Family members could go through security to the gate to say goodbye. Identification wasn’t always required and nobody took off their shoes. Passengers typically needed to arrive only 30 minutes before their scheduled flight time.

These are just a few of the changes that occurred to me off the top of my head. How about you? How different is your life today due to technology than it was just twenty short years ago?

Weekend Writing Prompt — Our Yard

Fandango28 Comments

When we bought our house last year, our backyard was covered with a large, black tarp. No grass, no trees, no plants. The house was a flip, and the flipper decided to leave the landscaping to the new owner.

We finally got the landscaping of our backyard completed this past June. We have a waterfall, a fire pit, a deck, a pergola, trees, shrubs, a patio, an outdoor kitchen. It’s beautiful.

Or it was until the deer and the gophers discovered our yard.

Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where the word is “yard.”

A Memorable Day

Fandango13 Comments

I was at work, at my desk, when Phil, one of my co-workers, ran into my office. “A plane just flew into one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York,” he said.

We ran together to the company cafeteria where a small group of people had already started to gather in front of the TV mounted on one of the walls. Phil and I got there just as a second plane flew into the other tower.

More and more employees came into the large room and gazed fixedly at the television screen. Some stood around the TV, some sat down at the cafeteria tables. All were mesmerized and horrified by what we were seeing and hearing.

No one was speaking. Everyone in that cafeteria was shocked into a frozen silence. The only sounds that could be heard were those coming from the TV and the sniffling coming from those watching, as most of us were crying. Even I, a typically stoic, unemotional man, was crying.

I spent a lot of time that day — and much of that week — crying. And being angry. Very angry.

It was a day that changed everything. It was, indeed, a memorable day.

Written for the Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge, where Sue W and GC ask us to share images or tell about a memorable day.

SoCS — Questions

Fandango9 Comments

Where is my heart?
Where did you take it?
When can I have it back?

Where are you?
Where have you gone?
How could you leave me?

Where can I find you?
Where am I without you?
What am I supposed to do now?

Where did we go wrong?
Where does this leave me?
Why did you do this to us?

Where will this nightmare end?
Where did things unravel?
Who the hell are you, anyway?

Written for Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, where Linda gives us the word “where.”