The internet in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack

parts of the United States that would function in case of a national emergency when other methods of communication would be out of commission. The U.S. Defense Departments Advanced Research Projects Agency established ARPANET to link computers on the East and West coasts, as well as command centers in Utah and Illinois that could continue to communicate in the event of a nuclear attack. But it was over thirty years later on September 11, 2001, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon, during which about 3,000 people were killed, that the Internet was used for the purpose for which it was originally designed. This paper was first written for the Digital Communities: Cities in the Information Society conference in November 2001 to explore both the function and the uses to which the Internet was put on 9/11 and the weeks that followed. It has been updated to include information on modifications to the Web in reaction to that attack o