Remembering

Drone reconstruction of the World Trade Center, NYC, 2026. Courtesy Getty Images Twenty-five years ago was a long time, long enough for me to have written down my thoughts about the day several times before; long ago enough for the act of remembering to yield to the act of editing, redacting, and constructing a narrative thread of the day. In September 2001 I was in the second year of business school. On a brilliant blue Tuesday morning, I had just finished writing a blog update and had gone into the library to study. Starting up my web browser to download some course notes, I hit the message on Yahoo (images weren’t loading) that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I went looking for more information and found it at Dave Winer’s Scripting News blog. Shellshocked, I left the library and walked into the lobby of E-52, MIT Sloan’s main building, where I joined a gathering crowd of students, faculty, administration staff, and others watching the coverage. I saw the videos,…