Monkeynotions

This weekend I resolved not to post on Sept. 11. So much for that.

The first reason for this is that I felt it strange to continue about my daily life as if it were normal without some form of being able to pause, reflect, and remember. This being, I had resolved to take something normal out of my life to force me to remember that this is a special day.

The second reason is that I’ve felt that the computer has been a poor conductor of sacredness and rituals. Perhaps it’s because I tie these together with tangible experiences that are 3 dimensional. The memorial service we had for a friend, a wedding, a candlelight vigil, the giving up of an addicition.

Right after 9/11 there were moving pictures of vigils and email chains to have porch lights turned on at certain times as a symbolic act. Back then the web was just a vehicle to encourage sacredness. However, after reading Susan Mernitt’s post and Robert Scoble’s post about 9/11, I am coming to realize that perhaps the web has evolved to allow some sacredness and not just a tool to encourage symbolic acts (as in the email chain that got passed around).

The web has become more of a social media and ways to express ourselves online, a place for participation, and rich interaction, much like symbolic sacred ritualistic acts. Here is a Flickr Memorial that my friend did for a friend that had passed away.

I was sad to see that Yahoo, Google and AOL did not do anything special on their homepage, as a rememberance to 9/11, which they have done in the past. I’m glad we don’t make it a public holiday, I can see it 3 generations from ni ow: Fry’s is having a 9/11 sale? ewwwww.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 11th, 2006 at 8:13 am and is filed under remembering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.