On the timecapsule theme from earlier, Yahoo! have released their own electronic time capsule.

For 30 days, from October 10 until November 8, Yahoo! users worldwide can contribute photos, writings, videos, audio – even drawings – to this electronic anthropology project. This is the first time that digital data will be gathered and preserved for historical purposes.

Whilst not really a capsule which will be unveiled at a future date, the idea is somewhat interesting. It would be even more interesting if it were to be sealed and re-opened in say 100 years. Infact, the description makes it sound more like a piece of art than of history or anthropology.

The interface itself is also quite “artistic”. The viewer can roll the sphere around and randomly hit one of the panels. This panel represents a user/profile in the capsule. Whilst the site is built mostly in Macromedia/Adobe Flash, it does have some nice search and tagging facilities.
Finally, I would much rather submit some images to the archive, knowing that they would be sealed and unseen for some time to come. This for me is much more interesting. It also gives the future generation a point in time to reflect back on what was.

I’ll give the whole idea a little more exploration and perhaps submit a few things myself too.