How would the Twitter generation have coped with 9/11?

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

There was a staggeringly good programme on Channel 4 the other night called 9/11: Phone Calls From The Towers. I say “staggeringly good” because I was expecting this to be a sensationalist, intrusive sham of a documentary that exploited the final moments of people who died in one of the most horrible ways imaginable. Instead, it was a sensitively made and fascinating insight into the moments before the towers collapsed.

What surprised me most about this documentary was the way the relatives of the dead cherished the recordings of those conversations. Several of those interviewed had kept the answerphone messages from their dying husbands, wives and siblings; one had recorded the voicemail message from his brother and kept it on his iPod. Instead of recoiling in horror from the emotion-strewn messages of their loved ones dying (as I expected they would), they were proud and comforted by the sound of their voice.

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