9/11 Was Longer Ago Than You Think

As I think back to that day in our lives that totally horrified us, I think of many things. First I realize that early that morning at around 5:00AM when I was preparing to go on the air, I had no inkling of what was about to come up on my show.

In my business you have to be ready for anything. But this was beyond that. And suddenly everything that I prepared for the show was absolutely meaningless. This kind of thing makes you realize that at any moment something can happen that will make what you think is a big deal not so big in the real world.

How long ago does it feel like to you? To me sometimes it seems like yesterday, but let me share some things that have come into our world as we know it now that will suddenly make 9/11 seem like a long time ago.

An 18-year-old  today was only 7-years-old at the time and probably has very limited memory of the events and to them it feels like a lifetime ago. And while the news media and information machines seemed to be sending out continual updates at a lightening pace, on September 11, 2001 there was no Twitter, no Facebook, no YouTube and even Google News was still a year from its launch.

And certainly none of what internet news content was available was being uploaded to anyone's cell phone, nor was anybody doing any texting. Those technologies didn't really exist yet for consumers. Television news is where most people stayed glued that day watching the horrors unfold on those big boxy square-screened sets as flat screens and HDTV were still years off.

Kind of makes it all sound like it was decades ago when you think about it that way. Today marks the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011.