Where were you when?
41 years ago today, JFK was assassinated. Almost everyone living at the time can tell you where they were when they heard the news. It's a generational thing, and I suspect that we'll keep being reminded of it every Nov. 22nd until that generation has passed on. I don't quite get the obsession with it, but I wasn't due to arrive until a couple years later.
My own generation--the one that came on the heels of the boomers--has its own moments like that. I can tell you exactly where I was when I got the news that President Reagan was shot and the Space Shuttle blew up on take-off. I can tell you where I watched the Berlin Wall come down and where I watched the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fall. These will likely be a few of my generation's shared remembrances. These incidents engraved in history will, upon recollection, immediately take us back to a specific time and place in our memories.
Perhaps as a counter to my previous post, I must note that television played a key role in all these events. Will television play the same role in the future? Or in the future will we recall what websites we accessed or which blogs we followed, as events unfolded?
posted by Drew @ 9:39 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Drew, I was going through your list of events and checking off where I was for each of 'em Reagan, I had just gotten home from school, and my mom helped me understand it. Challenger, a teacher came into the class in tears to inform us. Berlin Wall, flat on my back, in bed with mono, listening to the radio. 9-11, I was again in bed, this time following my first night on a miserable 3rd shift temp job when my mom again called to tell me what happened, and helped me understand it through my sleepy stupor. TV actually played a secondary roll for me in all of those events. I remember best who first told me. I suspect that for most people, that will continue to be true, and many more will be relying on their favorite websites for the most up to date information, although they will rely on TV for video footage until broadband becomes widespread.
You know, now that you mention it, I, too, remember clearly the people who told me to "turn on the television" because of what was happening. (Except in the case of the Berlin Wall, when I was working AT a television station.)
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