In-Flight Broadband
Posted February 17th, 2003 @ 04:35pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I read an article about Boeing rolling out its 802.11b Internet access in airlines (in Britain for now, I guess), and I wondered if 9/11 would have happened - or if it would have been as bad - had everyone on that plane had access to the Internet - to friends on instant messaging clients, emails, police station Web sites, etc. I don't know. Anything good could be used for bad, too, and surely the terrorists could have disabled access at some point, but still, you never know.
Donate Life
Posted 17 Feb 2003 at 6:16pm #
Uhm, people on the planes had cell phones. They were talking to their loved ones during much of the whole mess on Sept. 11. People on the ground told people on 2 planes what was happening in New York and yet one of these planes hit the Pentagon and the other crashed in PA.
The people on those planes were not soldiers or law enforcement officers trained to "take down" armed (with something, knives prolly) terrorists who were quite intent on killing themselves and as many Americans as they could that day.
There is really nothing that could have been done different on Sept. 11, 2001.
Of course Bill Clinton had 7 years to deal with UBL (starting with the 1993 WTC bombing) and did jack squat so there is definately a blame game that can be played - just not one where having WiFi would have helped or not.
Posted 17 Feb 2003 at 6:19pm #
Here is a lil story on this BTW: http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/
Posted 17 Feb 2003 at 6:21pm #
I know they did that. But the first plane didn't do that, and furthermore, talking on a cell phone is obvious, while sending email from a HipTop might not be so obvious. More people could have been doing more with smaller technology that doesn't require you to have something held up to your face.