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.