A service has been invented through which you can send messages to people in the future. To whom would you send something, and what would you write?
A service that is oddly identical to a time capsule? This already exists and we’ve seen what people in the past thought we’d like to see in “the future” and it turns out to be the same kind of junk we have now, only older. Even when reading science fiction the authors are either so lazy as to assume nothing happens (leisure suits in the 26th century huh?) all the way to 2010, when we have a manned mission to Jupiter. The truth of the matter is that the things we were promised from images of what the future would hold didn’t matter once we had them. We never developed jet packs because we didn’t need them. We were promised videophones and then when they became trivial nobody cared enough to use them.
Most of this is meaningless. The only thing I would make an exception for is personal journalling. It’s a private time capsule to yourself in the future and that I will say is worth its weight in gold. Writing down your thoughts makes them solid, makes them things that years later you can open up and bask in how things were before. With the words you don’t have to struggle to reconstruct some time a million and a half hours ago, they are right there in black and white, just waiting for you. I think everyone should keep a personal journal of what they think as they go along their lives. The only thing I regret is not journaling sooner.
In a way, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress blogs and my Day One Journal are the very devices that I will use to send a message to the future. A future me. A future me who has forgotten much of what living in this time was like. I will, years from now, look at these entries and marvel about how simple things were, how limited we were, I’m sure there will be a lot of marvelous and terrible events between now and then. In the in-between this entry will persist, these words – written down – along with all the others, biding their time. In a certain way if you think about it, journalling is the most reliable way to pin your life in time. It’s a bid for immortality, you may be fleeting, but your words don’t have to be. In fact, your words could last forever if cared for properly. Look at the Code of Hammurabi. It lasted for 3785 years! The idea that our tweets and our blogs and our little journals could last that long or even longer takes my breath away.
Do yourself a favor. Start blogging. Start journaling. Find some way to record your story and get it done yesterday. Write as much as you can, because when time and disability strike it will be the word-shaped life-preservers that help you to keep your grip on who you are when you need them the most.