live.

[ back | up | next ]

dateline: too close

26 july 1996 9:31 p.m.

At 1:20 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, a bomb went off at the AT&T Olympic Global Village in Atlanta. I was watching the CNN Showbiz report when the first break came in. Officials were still racing to the scene, when a QuickTime movie of the blast shows up at CNN's web site. This is what technology does for us. Brings everyone within miliseconds of lives halfway across the world. A global village indeed. Look at me. Watching TV, where witnesses are telling the world how loud it was. Casually reloading the CNN page every so often to see it updated within three minutes ago. With a sick feeling in my stomach I double-click "parkexp.mov" sitting right on my Macintosh desktop, and watch and hear the deadly blast. Over. And over. And over again. I flinch each time. It's amazing. Exciting. Exhilirating. And wholly, deeply and horribly frightening.