I am a victim of an impulse to record and share.
I recently had an opportunity to ride in a B-17, the mighty Flying Fortress. I have been a fan of that plane all of my life. I was eager to put myself in the aircraft to get a sense of what it must have been like to fly during World War II; to imagine myself over Germany, machine guns blasting, enemy fighters buzzing and flak bursting all around. Naturally I brought my camera.
As soon as my flight was airborne I headed straight to the nose. Filming the props spinning as the San Francisco Bay rushed by. I also got great views from the waist, tail and open roof hatch. I rushed home eager to share the photos and videos on Facebook. People liked them and wished they could have been there too.
"How was it?" they asked. The flight is captured and forever preserved, available to anyone with access to a computer.
"Just look at the videos," I said.