The E-Mail Time Capsule
Forbes has created an E-Mail Time Capsule. You can write an email that will be sent in either 1, 3, 5, 10 or 20 years depending on your choice. Be quick, the time capsule closes on the 30th of November (this year!).
Forbes and their partners Yahoo! and Codefix have implemented a redundant networking system for making sure, that within 20 years, given that at least one of them sticks around, can send out the emails of the capsule, as Forbes writes.
I am just glad they added a code in an image you have to enter (as you have these days in blogs comments, etc.), so that nobody can mass-spam anybody.
Imagine receiving emails from, say, the ULTIMATE PHARMACY ONLINE, about Viagra – in 2023 – just to remember that Phizer went out of business some 15 years ago because some other stupid drug was invented?
And who says we even have Email in 20 years? We didn’t have it 20 years ago.
Think about it: what if someone had done a time capsule for Telex some 20-30 years ago? I can’t think of any company or person who still uses Telex Technology.
With IM and mobile messaging booming – maybe we wont have Email in 20 years? (Or just our parents – the grandparent generation – uses it. Sort of like now, where most of the handwritten letters you get are from your grandparents.
[...] This email is one year old… By Roland … that was the subject line of an email I just received. From myself, from exactly 1 year ago! Last year exactly on the 18th of November I tested the tool by Forbes and Codefix, with which you could send emails to yourself in the futuer. I tried 1 year, 5 years, etc. up til, I think 20 years. I was doubting whether it would really work, but here is the answer for the 1 year email: Greetings from your past. In the fall of 2005, you agreed to receive this message, which has been preserved for a year in the Forbes.com E-Mail Time Capsule. For more details, visit http://www.forbes.com/capsule [...]