SAN FRANCISCO: A handprint in the sand in Egypt, a sonogram of a Portuguese couple’s first son, a man praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem are among the videos and photographs from around the world that will be projected on canyon walls and beamed into space from an ancient pueblo as leading website company Yahoo showcases its 2006 digital time capsule beginning Wednesday. The three-day event at Jemez in the US state of New Mexico will showcase some of the more than 70,000 poems, stories, videos, songs, and pictures uploaded to the Yahoo Time Capsule depicting life in 2006. Submissions range from the intensely personal to greetings for alien life forms, including almost anything you could imagine, said Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. This project is a fascinating example of social media at its finest, highlighting the culture of generosity that exists and proliferates on the web today.
Yahoo plans to place the environmental media display on its website and stream it into the popular virtual world Second Life, where animated avatar residents could make contributions. More than 1.3 million individuals have visited the Time Capsule website to peruse offerings, leave comments, or make digitized contributions since the project was launched on October 9, according to Yahoo. Content for the first-ever electronic anthropology project to document human life has been sent from more than 200 countries, Yahoo said. The time capsule holds philosopher Deepak Chopra s thoughts about how to end a war one person at a time; a debut comic book by action film director Jon Woo, and tributes to late Steve Crocodile Hunter Irwin.
Yahoo said it would accept time capsule contributions through November 8, when Yahoo said it will donate $100,000 to charities whose mission is to heal the world.
The time capsule is to be buried at secret spot at Yahoo s campus in Sunnyvale, California, and a copy of the contents will be given to the Smithsonian Institution s recording archives in Washington. Yahoo plans to open the time capsule when it celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2020.
For more information or to make a contribution visit www.timecapsule.yahoo.com
