Charles Homans takes a different perspective on the changes brought about by 9/11. In fact, he argues that much of the changes we attribute to the attacks we actually brought about by technology.

These artifacts span the pre- and post-9/11 years, and the lost innocence they represent has nothing to do with the attacks. Their interest comes from their evocation of a period when people hung out with friends in person and sweated alongside strangers at clubs and music festivals; teenagers goofed un-self-consciously for cameras rather than posing for them like jaded celebrities; and popular culture could be loud and dumb and not picked apart in the digital panopticon for its social politics. The shape that looms ominously over them isn’t the Twin Towers. It’s the iPhone.

It’s taken for granted that things really changed after the September 11th attacks, and it’s measurably true. But how much of that is actually due to the attacks is highly debatable.