21st
A World Beyond
The insane amount of media coverage through all the different channels yesterday really struck me. I’m sitting there watching the inauguration, live on the CNN/Facebook little setup, while streams of random people are updating their Facebook statuses in another column. There were multiple outlets for watching the ceremony live online — CNN, current.tv (which is awesome, more on them later), hulu, and ustream, just to name a few.
And I’m thinking, cripes, what, exactly, is getting done right now? This is one of the most inspiring moments in history, and I’m thinking about productivity. I’m thinking about all the people in all the offices watching this two-hour event. It was an event so powerful no one cared what they had to do — they had to find somewhere to watch it. I’d like to know bandwidth consumption during those few hours, our building must’ve been through the roof. I remember telling one of my chat friends “something, somewhere is on fire.”
So yes, that was all crazy. And of course you have the endless array of articles on just about every site imaginable talking about it, and of course Twitter lit up like a Christmas tree. But, gladly, it hung in there. I didn’t see the fail whale this time but there were reports of a fail eagle, appropriately. Anyhow, while a tad slow, I think the internets hung together well to handle the mass explosion of media requests. And I think people realized for a little while how connected they are, really, and maybe how fortunate.
I mean people could have watched the ceremony live, ON THEIR IPHONE. You know how crazy that would’ve sounded, even a year ago? Now, I’m looking at my new little guy and wondering what kind of craziness does it have on tap in the next few years. Holograms? Lasers? Holograms with lasers?
So what’s my point with all this? The recent updating of whitehouse.gov (which looks great) created some posts of the same site back in the early 2000’s when Bush took office. That got me thinking if I remembered the inauguration of Bush’s last two terms.
And I totally don’t. It doesn’t help that I don’t particularly like the guy, or think he was qualified to make presidential decisions. But I really don’t remember my office shutting down to watch him take the oath of office. And something tells me I will remember this ceremony forever; not just because of Barack, but because of the way it brought life, work, nearly the internet itself, to a standstill to bear witness to a moment in history. And I hope my daughter will someday read about it in an accurate history book, and have some kind of recollection.
And I hope the next ceremony will be even better.
