Another weekend is coming soon and I decided to participate in Galen's weekend engagement challenge again. There are four prompts this time, you can choose whichever you like and I most likely have chosen the strangest one 😁. For me this is the most interesting one though. Check it out and join if you like.

Time capsule
You have the opportunity to leave three of your personal items in a time capsule to be buried then dug up in two hundred years from today. What do you put in there and why? How do you feel people of the future will interpret your items? Answer in at least 300 words and use photos you personally took if possible. source

Leaving something behind for future generations is not new. People have been doing it for ages, literally. Egyptian Pharaohs were buried with their money, favorite pets, valuables and even servants. Back in those days they believed in afterlife and thought they need all those items for their next life, which we know has not happened yet.

Closer to our days there have been several cases when archeologists or simple construction workers have discovered time capsules in walls or buried underground. I saw one recently, in November 2021 to be precise, a capsule that dates back to 1908 and was discovered accidentally, during some renovation works in a high school of Targu Mures.

This was the marble box the capsule was in, a very nice, stylish one, carved and decorated in accordance with those times. At the time of my visit, the actual metal capsule was at the archeology section of the museum, specialists were working on preserving the content of it.

What was in the time capsule? Local newspapers, coins, manuscripts, these are the items you usually find in most of them and these were the items found in that specific capsule too. It's always interesting to read about those times when the capsule was buried, it is like a trip back in time.

The capsule on the photos is now 114 years old, but Galen said ours would be dug up in two hundred years from today.

What are the 3 personal items I would put in the capsule? It's a very good question and the answer is not easy at all. However, after some thinking I decided to go with the followings and I'm going to tell you why. The order is random, does not represent the importance of the items.

A Diary

This may come as a surprise to many as I, Erika, am not important, have never been and never will be important. I'm just a small drop in the big ocean, an insignificant one, who has never done anything to be remembered for. So the diary would not be about my personal life, but about what life is like in 2023 and more specifically the financial, economical life of the world. I would write a detailed study, documenting the evolution of money and financial systems to show where we started, where we are now and let those who will open the capsule draw the conclusions about the rest.

We're at a crucial point in humanity's life, where the obsolete financial system is about to be replaced with a new one. A new financial foundation has been created, to separate money from politics. Money should not be tied to the state or politics for the obvious reason. Managing money has been and it is being abused in all sorts of ways today, which is the reason why we are in this terrible situation right now.

Crypto is here to stop money printing, take control out of governments hand and replace the old obsolete financial system. This is a process that takes time, quite a lot of time actually, but I'm confident it is the right way to a new financial system.

I would put together a detailed study about inflation, about where crypto adoption stands right now, to let future generations know how things were standing in 2023.

They say 1USD will always be 1USD, which is true, but the purchasing power of the U.S. Dollar has decreased drastically over the years.

source

If you look back in time, it is clearly visible that the U.S. Dollar is on a slippery slope for the last 110 years and there seems to be no stopping.

I would also write a few things that I find interesting, about art for example. Who are the contemporary artists today, to see if they will be remembered and valued in 200 years, like we value Michelangelo, Vincent Van Gogh, Picasso, Rodin and the Strauss family today.

Paper Bills And Coins

This is usually what capsules contain, to show future generations what state currency looked like, but this time these paper bills and coins will have a more significant role. In 200 years I'm expecting physical currency to disappear, which makes these coins and paper notes rarities and totally worthless as currency.

It would be interesting to know if these coins and bills will be valuable as collectibles though. I could make someone rich by stashing a few dollars in the capsule :)

My Phone

This is a funny one for several reasons. You can imagine my phone is not a special one, it's not even a high end iPhone that worth a lot because it is customized and has diamond cover or something. Yet, I want to include it in the capsule.

In 200 years communication most likely will be done without devices, something similar we see now in science fiction movies, so no one will know how to use the phone, but I think it will be interesting for them to look at it and know where technology was standing regarding telecommunication in 2023.

However, we already live in the era of digitization, so there's a chance that what I may be writing in my diary would be already known. Artworks, manuscripts are all scanned or in a process to be scanned, to be preserved in digital form for the future.

What about you? What would you put in a time capsule?

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