The ALI Time Capsule

Image: inajeep via Flickr

I read a post last week in HuffPo that the lost time capsule buried on the grounds of the Aspen Institute during the International Design Conference in 1983 had been unearthed, 13 years later than expected.  It had gotten lost in the ground when markers disappeared.  Steve Jobs — who had been at the conference — contributed a mouse from the Lisa computer.

The rest of the listed contents were all things you think of when you think 1983 (sort of): “a Rubik’s Cube, an eight-track recording of The Moody Blues, a June 1983 copy of Vogue magazine and a six-pack of Balantine beer meant for whoever dug up the capsule’s contents.”

The mouse was sort of the remarkable item in the set.

I guess the largest problem with time capsules is that you have no clue what people will be nostalgic about by the time they’re opened.  Things we take advantage of today and largely ignore could become elements that define the era.  For instance, after the zombies come and we’re all living in below-ground caves (in order to avoid the zombies roaming earth’s surface and living in our abandoned houses), we may feel nostalgic about things such as kitchen sponges.  Or paint samples.  Things we used back when we were above ground and had more light and our eyes could discern colour.  And we actually obsessed over the which shade of brown to paint our walls.

Or we could go with the items that clearly define this moment in time: an iPhone, dirt from Ground Zero, a bottle of Viagra.  But the things that have sticking power — such as the Rubik’s Cube — will most likely still be around either in use or in museums.  And the things that don’t have sticking power will become these things we sort of shake our head and laugh at, saying, “I have no clue why we thought that was important.”

I always wanted to plant a time capsule growing up, but I was really impatient AND I didn’t want to bury any cherished items in the ground.  But if I wasn’t going to bury cherished items, there didn’t seem a point.  Instead, every New Year’s Eve from age 8 until college, I copied over the same poem (one I wrote at age 8, so you can imagine…) and the alphabet, so I could see how my handwriting changed each year.  Those papers are somewhat buried at the moment in our storage room, which is sort of like having a huge time capsule in your house if you never deal with that room.  And I never deal with the storage room, hence why it’s like geek hoarders in there.

I guess I am interested in the idea of time capsules but have no desire to bury things that actually mean anything to me in this time period. (What a waste!)  And the reality is that it’s the intangible that means more to me overall.

In the interest of not actually burying anything, I propose a verbal time capsule post to be returned to in a set amount of years down the road.  In this comment section, I’d like to bury the blog posts and the header images and the site titles that mean a lot to you from the last ten years or so of the ALI community’s existence.  All you have to do is list them, though if you could provide a link, it would be even better.  Feel free to put in anything that means a lot to you; that will be something you’ll remember when you look back at the ALI community many years from now.

I’ll kick off the box with these items:

• The old sperm nudging header of A Little Pregnant
• Chez Miscarriage and Getupgrrl (as a whole)
• The very first Creme de la Creme
• Cyclesista
• The post “Returning to the Well” by Lavender Luz

What are you adding?  Since we have infinite space in which to contain them, which whole blogs, posts, headers, memes, ongoing projects, wise words, or videos from the ALI community should go in our virtual time capsule to remember the first ten years?