During the President’s health care speech two days ago, the shared experience that is the realtime Internet reacted to a perfect Twitter-fodder event — Joe Wilson’s “you lie” outburst — with a surprising amount of conversation about the real issue in the room, health care reform.

This realtime 24-7 Internet did not exist in 2001. We had the earliest versions of social media, instant messaging and blogs. But we had nowhere near the household use of many-to-many communication channels like Twitter and text messages. For the most part we spent 9-11 watching CNN. The Web in ‘09 is more about doing rather than watching. Twitter asks, “What are you doing RIGHT NOW?”

Here’s an exercise for today: Ask the people on your social networks what they were doing today in 2001. Get ready for lots of responses.

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