Andrew Kantor was the editor of Tech Decisions in September of 2001. The day after the attacks of 9/11, he wrote a column that reflected the anger many felt after watching the World Trade Center towers collapse.
“By the time you read this, I hope, we will have responded to the attacks against us with an unprecedented show of force—one that will shock the world to the same degree that yesterday's destruction did,” wrote Kantor. “I want the world to say, 'I didn't think America was capable of that.' I want historians to debate in 50 years whether we did too much.”
What was different then from now is Kantor's words—though written 24 hours after the attack—were published in the October edition of Tech Decisions, some three weeks after the attacks took place. There was no blog on our Website as there is today. The world had yet to discover Twitter.
While looking back on the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, I examined some past issues of our magazine. Other than Kantor's angry words, I was surprised there wasn't much written in our pages on the event. But in December 2001, we did publish an article titled “How the Internet Is Damaging the Insurance Industry” written by a guest columnist named John Ashenhurst.
The headline alone tells us, in retrospect, his words were misguided. Ashenhurst listed three problems with the Internet: what he called the certain failure of the Internet, the misuse of capital that was no longer being spent on other technology solutions, and the overselling of remote Web services.
At the time, Ashenhurst didn't believe the Internet was secure enough to develop into the business model it eventually became. He might have based that viewpoint on the events of 9/11. If you were in your office that day and heard the news, you probably went to CNN.com or some other Website as many of us did only to discover a slow, unresponsive Internet that couldn't handle the millions of visitors that craved information.
Our sister publication, the National Underwriter rushed to get the story . . . in print. It would be a few years before NU or Tech Decisions would have the capability of reporting immediately upon an event to its online audience.
Our Website back then was designed to publish last month's issue of the print magazine—we wanted to make sure all our magazine subscribers got a chance to view the magazine before posting the articles online. Today it's pretty much the other way around.
The Internet has hardly damaged the insurance industry. Instead, it has changed the way people do business. Resistance has been futile.
Security remains an issue—even more so today than a decade ago. Yes, the Internet conceivably could fail, as Ashenhurst predicted: “The industry becomes more dependent on the Internet daily, yet the Internet is likely to fail in ways we can't yet imagine.”
Well, people did imagine that it could fail, but it hasn't happened yet, in part because of what happened 10 years ago this Sunday. If 9/11 did anything for this country it was to renew our security measures. Had terrorists attacked the Internet in 2001, it would have been a major inconvenience, but it would not have crippled our economy. Today, it would seem like the world stopped.
Is there an evil genius out there ready to take it down in 2011, I suppose there could be, but it seems more likely that such a hacker would attack a single company rather than the entire World Wide Web.
Still, vigilance is demanded by all of us in everything we do—not just the Internet. Our lives have changed in the last decade. We are no longer naïve about the hatred our enemies have for us today. That should keep us all on our toes for decades to come.
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