As the time on everyone's mind came nearer, equipped with our PCs and laptops in front of us, each member of my training class quietly pointed browsers towards the network news websites of their choice. Even as our instructor was lecturing, and trying to stick to his itinerary, we slowly, one by one started to tune him out. History was about to be made, and we wanted to be witness to it, live via streaming video on the web.He too wanted to watch, so, about a half hour early, we basically halted our training to all tune in to the Inauguration.
It was like an intense moment of historical significance, and the way we were witness to it seemed quite historical as well. This inauguration would likely go down in history, among the more notable milestones, as probably the most-viewed live on the Internet so far.
Here we were, some 20 or so people, at their place of work, sitting in a room together, but each of us in their own way. Some watched CNN.com, some ABC News while others through entirely web-based providers like Yahoo and MSN. Some watched in fullscreen mode, others through a small window. Some multi-tasked and opened other browser windows or read email, for others, their full, undivided attention was fixed on the Inaugural proceedings at hand.
As I sat there watching the streaming video and audio playing at various points in time on each persons' computer, each somewhat out-of-synch with each other, it seemed as if it were a scene in a movie depicting a dramatic event unfolding for the various characters. In this scene, the camera flashes through various viewpoints, at times repeating the same moment in the event to capture multiple reactions. But unlike a scene in a film, this was real.
And thanks to the technological world we live in, we all felt just like we, each one of us individually, were there, staring in awe at history unfolding before us.
Only we were sitting warm and cozy, lit by the soft glow of our LCD monitors in an office building in sunny Florida, hundreds of miles away from the chilly winds of the jam-packed Mall.