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Show HN: Get texts replaying the unfolding events of 9/11 in realtime

3 points by graniter ↗ HN
http://timeshift.world

This sends texts to your phone on 9/11 that is synced to when they event actually happened on Sept 11, 2001. When something happens, you get a text. And you can pick different perspectives: "As it happened" or "Hindsight".

For those that remember that day, this brings back feelings and memories of what it was like. For those that were too young, this might help increase understanding of the impact of that day.

Timeshift.world is slated to have several timeshifted events, but 9/11 is the first.

2 comments

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dantillberg
One of the things that I remember about 9/11 was that, even though news outlets had largely come online, websites struggled under the stress of everyone hitting them constantly trying to get updates.

I remember in particular that the New York Times dumbed down their home page to basically be a bulleted list summary of facts as well as they were known at the time (unfortunately, the web archive doesn't seem to have a copy during the morning of 9/11/2001). And some of those facts were wrong -- a rumor that persisted much longer than others was that there had been a car bomb at the State Dept, but there was a lot of confusion, as well as uncertainty and incredulity about what the truth was.

So, anyway, I like this idea, including the "fog of war" that existed particularly with these events. I don't know what you already have planned, but it would be neat to show both conflicting information in real-time as well as attributing sources (e.g. "CNN is reporting that ...").

Also, another fun event from those years where news outlets screwed everything up would be the 2000 presidential election.

graniter
We do have incorrect reports as part of the the "As it Happened" experience. The reports of a car bomb at the State Dept is a great example and is included.

A lot of 9/11 commemoration now is all done in hindsight, but like you said, in reality it was very confusing, little information, conflicting and erroneous reports, and most of the information came from TV news. Websites weren't as social or robust.

So to actually "replay" that day by getting realtime texts on your own phone throws you back to that day more than commemoration programs do IMO.

There is also a "Hindsight" perspective on the site you can choose which will notify you when Flight 11 takes off, when Cheney left to go to the bunker, etc. which gives another interesting perspective of the events.

There's something different about getting the events realtime that is just "new." We typically read summaries or view edited clips. Realtime info, over the day, is really something that hasn't been done before.