Yesterday when I first found out about the Norway Spiral, I got obsessive about finding out everything I could. I think it was due to the insanely beautiful photos and mesmerizing videos and total lack of information that fueled my motivation. - I sound like Sarah Palin there using an adjective before every noun.- We know what happened now and the novelty has worn off already, but when you sit back and think about the event and how it played out versus the news story, things are interesting in a different way.
When I first saw these photos it was about 6 am CST and when you look at Google Trends this was when "Norway Spiral" had only doubled as a search from what ever came up for a search before this happened. At the time only the site I found it at (which I don't even remember), Daily Mail, and the Examiner had anything posted about what happened. By about 12 or 1 pm the keyword combination was labelled a "Fiery Search," which was 1 level short of being viral. I can't figure out how to get to the graphs there anymore, so this is all from memory. It is likely off a bit. At this time, the only non-blog publications even mentioning that something happened were tabloid type places and Discover Magazine.
Google has a real-time section on searches that updates continuously in your results when someone is posting about those key words in blogs, twitter, youtube, and as news-y sources publish something. I had never noticed it before but on this search it was scrolling so fast you almost couldn't click on a link shown because it moved a notch lower so quickly. This is how I initially followed the story. Then when the more popular blogs and sites were posting links to the tabloids, like at Digg, the comment sections were a colossal help. You had hundreds of people commenting, the majority useless but entertaining, but some of them were written by people who were experienced in something relative. There were also people from Norway translating news stories written in their language (I'm still not sure what it is called). That is how I found out it was likely really a rocket. Before that I knew it was being labelled as a rocket, but official sources said they had no idea. They just said that was their best guess.
A person from within Norway had sent me a link in their language thru Google Translate. Which had some information comparable to what Rachel had reported on in her show: A transmission from the Russian Military picked up by ham radio type people from before the event occurred. Unfortunately I was up for 2 days at that point so I am having a hard time remembering exactly what it was that I read. I'm not sure of the time zones but I would guess that about 12 hours after something happened in the Arctic fucking Circle, I had seen about 100 high definition photographs and probably 10-15 videos of an event that lasted for only 2 minutes. Reminder: I'm on the other side of planet.
If this had happened 15 years ago, I still would not have seen a photo or even heard about this yet. Now, it only takes an estimated 12 hours to hear about it, have 100 high def photos, a few handful of videos, and to actually speak to someone from within the state it happened. Granted this occurred in a wealthy country - I'll bet fucked up stuff like this happens in Iraq/Afghanistan all the time and we never hear about it. Two things come to mind for me at this point: we really are becoming a global community and technology has advanced faster than I think we even realize.
I have 4 cameras and 2 video recording devises within 50 feet of me at most times. Those are the only cameras with in that space that I own, not including other people or security. If I have 1-2 minutes, whatever happens around me that I notice has the possibility of being recorded by like 2 or even 3 sources if I wanted. Whatever was going on would have to be extreme for me to even use one device. I am only stating what is possible. Then within 20 minutes I could have videos and photos of what just happened up on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, this blog, AmericaBlog, YouTube, and Flickr as well as emails sent to any publication/group in the entire world. Then I could start making phone calls.
To make this all a little more extreme, the devises I have on my person at any given time all have cameras as a secondary function. So even if I don't plan on recording something, I always have the ability. I have my cellphone, my ipod touch (strictly for my vehicle), 2 laptops with built in web cams, 1 actual webcam, a regular digital camera, and a dv camera. If I didn't have a laptop on me (never happens) I could still use my phone or ipod to send the pictures or video wherever I wanted.
Now it is time to conclude these thoughts. If something happens for more than 2 minutes in a good fraction of the world, we will not only hear about it, but have a selection of documents to view about it within the day. Then in another good portion of the planet where the internet is not so abundant we will still get the story within a week or two. This is all discombobulating, really. It also pushes UFO stories into a new light, because if it doesn't have like 5-10 different recordings and it is in an average city it isn't real. The Norway Spiral was in or near the Arctic Circle. I would mention that a UFO was spotted at O'Hare airport and reported by corporations and quite a few people in the middle of day, a few years ago, and nothing has been released. O'Hare is one of the busiest airports in the world. So either my ideas don't hold water or the world has changed that much in an even shorter amount of time than I presented. We are living in crazy times.
Here is the video about information about the O'Hare UFO that echoes what I've written and would be worth watching if you are interested in what I've said. A news broadcaster was being recorded by the news camera when they were off air and he is interviewing someone about what happened. Basically this is internal footage that was never meant to be released, but someone took it anyways. This is off topic, but how sad is it that you get more information from this than the official broadcast? That could be a whole different post.
