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Comment by bbor | Hacker News Reader

Ok I'm not at all judging, or condemning. But this:

  'I was just in a plane crash. Oh my God,' says one woman who filmed herself upside down in her airplane seat.

Is a goddam surreal sign of the times. Absolutely surreal.

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Well, I am judging this at least a little: Why is the first reaction of this passenger to make a video of herself? Makes me wonder if there ever was an accident where first aid was delayed because somebody had to make a video first....

I think theres some tech sway here. Ex: I wonder how technology changes how we recall events and WHEN we recall them. The plane that flipped upside down being a great example. Likely less than 1% of people use a diary to recount insanely major events of their lives. In the 1980s, lets say 80% of people used diaries/journals to recount the events of their lives. That number today is probably less than 1%. But NOW 100% of people use their phones to recount events via video. They dont try to remember what happened, since its there captured at the time of the event. Diaries recount the event after the information has decayed and there’s a minds-eye element to it, so it has additional subjectivity because reading a diary you have to imagine what happened in the past instead of a visual aid.

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