He also discusses the idea of the "general accident, (Ulmer xii)" which is described as any sort of notable occurrence or development that affects all of mankind, no matter there social, financial, or political standard. One example he gave of this was 9/11, as it was not only notable in itself but has since been the cornerstone for a vastly changed US Foreign Policy.
The reason he brings up the general accident is because it caused a huge number of people in the public sphere to stop and take note, and then commemorate the event by creating small shrines of remembrance to the victims of 9/11.
Later, Ulmer mentions a comment make by Rush Limbaugh about how more people die from car accidents, smoking, and other such events than have died in Iraq and Afganistan, so it is reprehensible that people protest that, without first protesting drowning.
The electronic monument, or the MEmorial, as Ulmer also names it, is the answer to that. It is a tiny shrine in the vast public sphere that is the internet, and it is to commemorate some less general accident, such as all of the people that drown each year. I say "less general" rather than non-general, or even specific, because many of these events are general in a different sense than 9/11 was a general accident. Instead of one singular event affecting the world all at once, this is 100,000 similar events affecting the world in a piecemeal way.
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