Visions of the Past

Sadly, my virtual time capsule died on the e-vine. I thought it would be fun to leave a message—a blog post in this case—for some future reader to find, but the very technology I thought would make it possible thwarted me in the end.

The ability to post-date a monologue for automatic publishing was recently enabled in the blogging system I've come to know and love during the past couple years, which triggered the idea of setting that future date beyond what might ordinarily be considered reasonable. I figured 2099 would be a good year to aim for, because it's unlikely I'll be around by then. At least not in the corporeal sense.

The message I crafted was simple, yet poignant. By 2099, I think simple messages will be appreciated even more than they are today; text messaging is already the de facto standard, and it's only going to get better. Or worse, if truncated word-pieces with no vowels seem limiting.

Anyway, my message read, "Hi it's 2099 so I'm dead now. How's it going?" Then there were some pictures of clowns, just in case there aren't any clowns left in 2099. I uploaded my post, changed the year from 08 to 99 and pressed the publish button. But instead of adding my post to the future-delivery queue, the system decided I really wanted 1999 and sent it backward, into the past. I decided to spell it out, and republished my message with all four year-digits intact.

Same result. Maybe it's just Google's way of telling me not to hide stuff in their servers for 91 years, or maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with trying to immortalize myself. Either way, it looks like I'll be burying that box in the backyard after all.