Age Of The Instant Epitaph

It may not be the end of the world, but I suspect that last week marked the end of communications as we know them. I rang an old friend in New York late the other night. I rang because l had sent her an email several days before asking if she and her husband and all in their circle were OK, and hadn't gotten a reply. This nagging silence bothered me. No news was not good news. So I used the telephone. Her husband answered. Yes, they were all fine. Then he got my friend, whom he said was on the other line. She hadn't received my e-mail. In fact, she said, she had just been talking to the service provider trying to work out what was going on. They had recently changed to a higher-tech, faster system. One that seemed to have failed, possibly because of infrastructure destroyed in the World Trade Centre. We chatted for a while The line was very clear. She described standing on the roof of their building in Brooklyn, using, using binoculars to watch the twin towers burning. She spoke of the horror of it, knowing how many people worked there. Then air force fighter jets overhead, which, along with the smoke on the skyline, suggested a city at war.. Life still wasn't back to normal. They had been planning to get their backyard fixed up this weekend but had put it off. It didn't seem important any more She said she was concerned about President Bush's talk of retaliation, but added that it difficult to voice such thoughts because of all the fear and anger around. . We wished each other well and bung up. I thought about how things had changed. Once we exchanged letters. More recently it has been the occasional e-mail. To use the phone in this cyber age seemed strangely old-fashioned. But it worked. We talked. The unease I had felt was eased. And the following day l got a normal e-mail. The system had been sorted out, she wrote. They were now back on line.. We have all read countless other e-mails over the past week. One was in newspapers yesterday, recounting the last words of Andrew Knox, an Australian who had been high up in the World Trade Centre.. A co worker had heard him, over a speaker, yelling: "We're all going to die"! There were screams in the background. Sounds of panic. Later, over a mobile phone the following exchange was heard between Mr Knox and another man, trapped on the roof: "Andrew, I can't breathe any more"; "I can't breathe either". Then no more. And finally the line dropped off. There have been transcripts of other phonecalls. Barbara Olsen telling her husband: "Our plane is being hijacked". Mark Bingham calling his mother: "We have been taken over by three men that say they have a bomb." Then, "I love you very much." To which his mother replied: "We love you." Silence on the line. It's a new full stop: The Phone went dead.. Yesterday I learned about a different form of communication: a woman evacuating her building in lower Manhatton tapping out pager messages to her husband in New Jersey. "Seems helicopter crashed into WTC. Going to street now. Very scary. End of world." It may not be the end of the world, but I suspect that last week marked the end of communications as we know them. Suddenly we are in the age of the instant epitaph. Heart-breaking messages on telephone answering machines. Calls from a doomed aircraft. E-mails from smoke-filled offices. Every conflict introduces a new element to our concept of war, which is how this has been described. Vietnam was the first TV war; from the Gulf came those surreal images of missiles going down chimneys; from the US, September 11,2OO1, we have immediate farewell messages.. So much has changed. In July,1861.during the US Civil War, Major Sullivan Ballou ended a letter home to his wife: "0 Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit around those they loved, I shall always be near you . Sarah,do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again." He was killed a week later. His letter was delivered; his words survived.. Today, people anticipating their own deaths as Ballou did, can make calls on mobile phones, type on pocket pagers, send e-maiis on laptop computers.. But when things go wrong, communications break down. People queued at public phones in New York because their mobiles were useless.. I sent an e-mail to an old friend and it didn't get through. So I made a phonecall. It was good to hear her voice.. Melbourne staff writer Alan Attwood is a former New York correspondent for The Age. This article published, then untitled, in The Age, Breaking News section, Friday September 21st., 2001

LOOK AT OTHER GREAT CYBERLIFE ARTICLES: Technical Knockout by Maurice Gleitzman. Email Has Saved The Letter by Graeme Phillipson. Unveiled: The Web Of Depression, by Douglas Rushkoff. Just Words On A Screen, by Robin Knight. Boys' Toys, by Red Symons. Electronic Friends, by George Vecsey. Devolution, by Jane Freeman

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