Collecting stories to build a World Trade Center memorial BL Ochman has alerted me to this excellent initiative. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation is collecting stories about 9/11. I guess we all remember what we were doing when this tragic event unfolded.
The story-base will be significant and I can see how it will be an effective memorial. With such a rich resource it would be a shame to see its potential unfulfilled. Here are a couple of ways it could be enhanced. People should be encouraged to interact with the stories by being able to comment on them and perhaps tagging and rating each story according to its impact on the reader. The group intelligence would arise from these interactions and provide assistance for new users seeking stories that matter to them."
(Via Anecdote.)
I'm really intrigued by storytelling in general, and while the Trade Center is so totally not the cultural moment that I'm interested in exploring, I think what this project proposes is really interesting. If memorial can take forms like the Berlin Holocaust memorial (see blog post which discusses it here,) then why can't memorial take an intellectual space like story base? And isn't that really cool, as a concept?
Just a thought...