UBS Time Capsule

A good time capsule is not about preserving items, it is about preserving memories.  Things come and go but capturing the energy and meaning of a particular point in time and communicating that to someone generations from now is a genuinely valuable gift to the future.   It is a tremendous challenge to identify objects that might capture and convey significance because there is no way to know what modern things we take for granted might become obsolete or more important than ever down the road.  Cultural traditions are also at risk of being lost. An excellent starting place for such a selection is always going to be about people, though.

In any generation, the bonds between people are the most lasting and most meaningful.  There is no shortage of interpersonal connection in this age, thanks to mobile devices and social networks.  Whatever the future holds for social networking, this phenomenon cannot be ignored and should be remembered.  Also, anyone who has had a mobile device for more than a few years can tell you how far and how fast technology has progressed.  A succinct and appropriate artifact for the future would be a cutting edge mobile device, no doubt comically defunct in 150 years, that is loaded with images of modern social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Other important artifacts would be examples of business and news.  An edition of several major newspapers, partly to have a comprehensive representation of the country’s news at the time and partly to show how differently news can be reported at the time, would be a valuable addition to the capsule.  The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal would all be of interest as they tend to focus on different areas to different degrees.  Examples of reporting on the same story from these different sources would provide a different kind of insight into current media that may be entirely foreign in 150 years.

The list of potentially meaningful items could go on for pages and pages.  The way people relate to each other and to our nation will always be important, however, and so these items will be important at least by way of comparison to whatever similar things exist in 150 years.  Whether they are amazed or disappointed, amused or fascinated, is not for us to predict.  All we can do is hope they care.