The essay I picked was David Friend’s piece on how we experience history. This piece uses the 9/11 tragedies as an example of how our perception of historical events will change. Friend talks about how there were so many cameras at different angles pointed towards the World Trade Center Towers on the morning of 9/11 and how this creates a much more infallible historical record of the attacks that will not get muddled by time or historical interpretation. He states that 2 billion people, or close to a third of the human population, saw some sort of coverage on the event thus making it a huge part of civilization’s consciousness. This revolutionizes the way events are captured and viewed in the world.

I think this new era of camera access for all is a great thing for society. The 9/11 tragedies were a horrible act of mass murder and it is important for the United States as well as the rest of the world to remember exactly what happened. This is made possible by the existence of the raw footage from the morning of September 11 2001. This revolution has implications for future events as well. It means that many more people all over the world will be able to experience significant historical events. Also it now means that many future events will be remembered more accurately and it will be much harder for people to cover up or fabricate major historical events.