Yahoo Launches World's Largest 'Time Capsule' in History

Enthusiasts from around the world are getting a chance to take part in Yahoo’s time capsule project that is aimed to celebrate and understand life and global culture in 2006. The process to store worldwide multimedia submissions has been started by Internet search giant, Yahoo! from today (Tuesday).

For 30 days, people from all walks of life will be able to submit text, personal photos, stories, thoughts, ideas, poems, prayers, videos, music, art and sounds that reflect human nature, to be included in a message, in its time capsule.

"One in two Internet users around the world use Yahoo!, and we are proud to document this moment in history with them in celebration of the global online community," said Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief of Yahoo!.

"Wherever people use Yahoo!, from Mexico, Germany or China to the US, we want them to represent their culture and show us what's important to them by participating in this historic Internet time capsule event. It will be fascinating to see what people submit as their part of this 2006 snapshot, which will be shared with generations to come," he added.

Everyone, from student to seniors, is boosted to participate with personal submissions on topics such as love, anger, fun, sorrow, faith, beauty, past, now and hope.

The submissions, which would be part of Yahoo’s "Time Capsule" project, will be digitalized and beamed with a laser into cosmos from the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, about 40km from Mexico City.

The media company will celebrate the project with a grand three-day ceremony at The Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, now an archaeological site, beginning October 25. The event will be webcast, Yahoo! said.

According to Yahoo!, with the launch of this project it has provided its users an opportunity to digitize how we have progressed since the birth of the Internet and provide a snapshot of how we are living with it.

The participants of the project will have their contributions archived and preserved electronically for years to come. After this, the submissions considered exceptional would be projected on the pyramid and all the digitized data would be beamed from the Mexican monument into outer space, Yahoo! editor and Chief Srinija Srinivasan informed.

The submitted data would be transformed into an optic stream and projected skyward, Yahoo! said. "We are bringing together this ancient site with present-day culture in the time capsule and at the same time beaming it into space for the future," Mr Srinivasan said. "It is there for whoever is out there."

Adding to this, Yahoo! has conferred an opportunity to time capsule participants to make a selection from a list of global organizations to which they would wish Yahoo! to give a portion of its US$100,000 it has reserved for donation.

The enlisted organizations are World Wildlife Fund, the International Refugee Committee, Grammen Bank, the Global Fund/One.org, UNICEF, the International Child Art Foundation, and Seeds of Peace.

According to Yahoo!, the Internet-based time capsule will also be featured in over 20 localized Yahoo! home pages, including the widely known home page on the Internet, www.yahoo.com.

After the deadline of entries i.e. on Nov 8, the contents will be donated to the Smithsonian Institution Folkways Recordings archives and The National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico to be preserved, observed and shared with generations to come.

One more copy of the project, to which Yahoo titled as "the world's largest time capsule in history," will be buried at the Yahoo! Campus, to be opened on Yahoo’s 25th anniversary in 2020 at Yahoo! Corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.