You may have heard the news about Adobe ending its support of the software program called Flash and not given it a second thought. 

That stuff happens in tech. Systems and softwares become obsolete and need to be upgraded or replaced. 

Here’s the problem with this particular program not being used; the Adobe Flash media player was what played the news content that big media companies like CNN, the Washington Post and ABC News stored in their archives. 

Which means when Adobe did away with Flash, a lot of the coverage online of September 11, 2001 cannot be accessed and viewed.  

Every network delivered around-the-clock news coverage following the attacks on 9/11, and according to a CNN report, much of that coverage is unable to be accessed.  Instead of seeing reports, newscasts, features and coverage, users will see a gray box with a message that says “Adobe Flash player is no longer supported.”

The CNN story quoted a professor in the Syracuse University journalism department who previously worked as an online producer for the Washington Post in the late 1990’s, and then for AOL.  

“This is really about the problem of what I call the boneyard of the internet. Everything that’s not a piece of text or a flat picture is basically destined to rot and die when new methods of delivering the content replace it. I just feel like the internet is rotting at an even faster pace, ironically, because of innovation. It shouldn’t.”

Flash was a controversial program.  Back in 2010, Steve Jobs ripped the security issues of Flash, and the fact it was a proprietary system.  He refused to put Flash on Apple devices, which some point to as the beginning of the end for Flash. 

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