2391. The marvels of technology

It was indeed a marvel of modern technology that so many people were able to capture on phone the falling of Avery Brown from 400 feet up in the Ferris wheel. He hit a few steel bars on the way down. It was a pretty bumpy flight. Neville Noonan reckoned, watching his video frame by frame, that the kid must have bounced around eleven times on the way down.

There were thirty-one recordings of the fall handed in to police. “This is an overwhelming help to discover exactly what happened,” said Police Officer Barney Meldrum. “Unfortunately there are five or six videos that are practically worthless, having recorded not the fall but simply the mess on the ground. We all know what that looked like. But generally speaking the public support has been amazing.”

Nana Vilovsky is an investigative journalist. She read about the incident online. She was able to get a snapshot of the fall from one of the witnesses to put on the front-page. Facebook is fortunately a veritable gold mine of what people are saying. It always produces information that is newsworthy, although Nana Vilovsky had to make a bit up because Avery Brown’s mother refused to be interviewed and was apparently distraught. “At least she has a video to remember her son’s last moments,” wrote Nana Vilovsky.

Someone called Kerry Johns or Jones was able to point out that the tragedy of Avery Brown’s flight had little to do with anything serious. “If you want to get serious just think how many people will be tempted to jump off the Ferris wheel once global warming takes effect,” commented Kerry on Twitter.

Ngaire Pinkum said it was a shame. She had the sound turned on to record but the screams of onlookers in the fairground, drowned out the loud splat he made when he landed.  “I can still hear it in my head;” she said, “the splat. If the sound had been clearer a lot more people would’ve downloaded it.”

Noddy Barberon, a sixteen year old visiting from North Dakota, spoke for everyone when he said, “I hope they are not going to shut down the Ferris wheel for an hour or two. I’m only here for a short stay.”

Finally, Elsie Styvenberg was able to point out that because of the hub-bub over the kid on the Ferris wheel, hardly anyone took any notice of the toddler later who got run over by the bumper cars.

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