Yahoo invites contributions to online time capsule

Submit your media

11 October 2006 15:11 GMT / By Amber Maitland

Yahoo is assembling one of the largest time capsules ever made, by asking people to contribute their words and images on various themes.

The time capsule will be projected from 25-27 October on the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico, and also beam the data into space (although we’re not sure how that’s going to work, exactly). On 8 November, the capsule will be sealed off and given to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC for safekeeping until 2020, when it will be reopened on the 25th anniversary of Yahoo.

The eight categories comprise Anger, Fun, Sorrow, Faith, Beauty, Past, Now, Hope, You, and Love; people can submit words, pictures, video, sound, and drawings.

Each contribute then chooses one of eight charities for Yahoo to contribute a portion of $100,000.

This sort of project raises all sorts of questions on various tangents. We could theorise at length about whether a digital time capsule like this will actually still be able to viewed or read fourteen years down the road.

It’s such an intangeable, ephemereal medium for a time capsule. Our forefathers built giant stone edifices that have in many cases withstood the ravages of time; will our digital media prove as timeless? We doubt it.

In 14 years time, will we be asking, Yahoo who?

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Software, Online, Search engines, Yahoo