September 11 and the Internet People have been asking me to comment on the uses of the Internet since yesterday¹s horrific events. I must say that like everyone else in this country and around the world, I am in shock. I am experiencing this event more as a human being and U.S. citizen than I am as a scholar and critic. And, I think it may be too early for us to know what roles the Internet is playing. It will be weeks, even months, before we can look back with even some perspective. Still, it is apparent that the Internet is playing am important role as an information source. Both traditional sites, like cnn.com, and non-traditional sites, such as the many Web sites springing up in response to yesterday, are available to anyone around the world. As is always the case with the Internet, its speed and reach have brought photographs and stories, both amateur and professional, to the entire world. People who have gone back to work today are no doubt spending as much time surfing the Web as they are trying to bring some sense of normalcy to their workplaces. The Internet is also a site where misinformation can and does flourish and where, often, emotions run high. We must be careful not to let the speedy nature of Internet communication lead us to rumor-spreading or anger against entire groups of people. We should use the Internet at this time as a place for community and debate and not for hatred. I have seen on the news that U.S. intelligence agencies are looking for ISP logs, email messages, and other digital evidence as part of their investigations. These days, there is always an Internet angle to any criminal act, and we will have to wait and see what if any role the Internet had in the communications of the terrorists. It occurred to me yesterday that this sort of strike is the kind of thing the Internet was originally designed to withstand. You can take out one node, but you can¹t take down the entire network when such a network is set up like a web rather than a top-down hierarchy (or as a friend of mine liked to say, a vine growing along your garden fence, sending shoots in all different directions, versus a nicely trimmed tree). So while we may have lost the physical sites where many major financial transactions took place, I like to believe that the heart of these transactions are digital, backed-up, and inspired, ultimately, by confidence in our inventions and economy. Companies that have lost hundreds of people and floors of office space have taken to the Web to post words of comfort and reassurance. Like the Internet, our economy cannot be taken down with the loss of one site. We must continue to believe in ourselves as we focus on how to reopen the markets and make the world more secure. This of course sounds so empty, in a way, and says nothing about the people whose lives were lost, those who will suffer terribly for the rest of their lives because they lost loved ones, and all of us are affected in other ways. The use of cell phones gives us insight into the terror and final moments on the highjacked planes. Word of these cell phone calls were posted on the Internet quickly, and already we have heard the moving and brave stories of what people said in their final moments. Because of one set of calls, we now appear to know that brave people were able to avert at least one of the planes, crashing into a field rather than a building of people. That is really all I have to say today. My thoughts right now are with the victims, their families, and all of humanity. It is an unthinkable thing that has happened. All the dot-com hype of the past two years suddenly seems so silly and meaningless to me. Peace to all of you. Laura Gurak ---------------- Laura J. Gurak, Ph.D. Associate Professor Rhetoric Department, University of Minnesota 1994 Buford Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108 v 612-624-3773 also--Director, Internet Studies Center -- www.isc.umn.edu Faculty Fellow, Law School gurakL@tc.umn.edu http://www.rhetoric.umn.edu/faculty/LGurak/