Digital time capsule imagines life in 2038
- Source: Global Times
- [10:40 June 29 2010]
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By Zhang Cao
Visitors of the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai on Monday will have a chance to see the kinds of things that may just lie ahead for the world in the year 2038.
Organizers are working on the first time capsule in World Expo history to take the form of a computer chip - illustrating the technological progress of humankind over the years - that aims to present the future with images of what people today think of when they imagine life 28 years from now.
"Some of the contributions so far are quite interesting," said Zhou Kai, head of China Youth Daily's Shanghai bureau, a co-organizer of the time capsule project. "Some people say that in 28 years there will be no police, no traffic lights and no newspapers in the city."
Some 1,000 imaginations have already been collected and will be shown to visitors next week during Youth Week at the Expo Park, a five-day event that expects to attract 100,000 visitors.
The public can also cast their votes on the contents that should be included by logging on to web2.cyol.com/time/ before August 30. A total of 100 images will be selected by a panel of judges, including physicist Li Zhengdao, futurologist John Naisbitt, and Chinese cultural talents Wang Meng and Feng Jicai.
The digital time capsule will be placed and held for safe-keeping at the Shanghai Library on September 23, years after the same day the world's first-recorded time capsule was buried at New York City's Flushing Meadows Corona Park in 1938 - and set to be extracted in the year 6939.
"We chose to make a 28-year-old time capsule because the year 2038, when our time capsule will be viewed by the public, will commemorate the 100- year anniversary of the burial of the first-ever time capsule," said Mao Hao, deputy chief editor of China Youth Daily.
The first time capsule to be created at a World Expo was put together at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City.
Japan's 1970 World Expo in Suita, Osaka, the first World's Fair the country held, also buried two identical time capsules next to Osaka Castle.
