Yahoo and Yahoo Telemundo are creating a digitized time capsule that will beam onto an ancient pyramid in Mexico and into space.
Yahoo began accepting submissions of photos, video, sounds files, video and text yesterday and said in a prepared statement that the purpose was to join the “past and present with the universe’s potential future by sharing today’s culture on Earth with other life that may exist light years away.”
The time capsule is meant to document the good and bad of life around the world in 2006.
Yahoo said it expects the time capsule to be the largest ever created. The company plans to project the contents onto the 216-foot Pyramid of the Sun, in what is known as the City of the Gods, at Teotihuacan, near Mexico City and beam it into space with digital laser light Oct. 25-27. The event will be Web cast live. After that, Yahoo will digitally archive and seal the capsule for opening on the company’s 25th anniversary in 2020.
Yahoo worked with artist Jonathan Harris on the time capsule.
Now is that cool or what?
[More: Yahoo Time Capsule]
[Source: InformationWeek]
It’s all very nice, even if it is a transparent PR ploy, and heartening to see that the majority of entries are on the theme of love. (Hopefully on the love of one’s fellow man rather than on the love of say, one’s pet frog or stamp collection.) But were Yahoo! serious about preserving stuff, they’d use the most durable archival medium generally available: paper. High quality, acid free paper. And twenty years for a time capsule sure isn’t much time.
Lastly, food for thought: why do we insist on beaming proof of our existence out into the Great Unknown? What a triumph of hope over rationality that is! We’ve no idea whom or what visitors it might bring. Perhaps indeed the Ancient Wise Ones, or maybe inter-galactic epicureans who’d delight in having us as their main course at dinner.
Mexico to Yahoo: Not on our pyramid!
By Cyntia Barrera Diaz
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Lasers on our pyramid? No way!
Yahoo Inc. said on Wednesday it dropped plans to use Mexico’s Teotihuacan archaeological site for its much-hyped “time capsule” project after authorities fearing damage to the ancient ruins denied them permission.
for more, visit
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-10-12T023700Z_01_N11414699_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-YAHOO-PYRAMID.xml&src=101206_1002_ARTICLE_PROMO_also_on_reuters