The Internet giant invited people worldwide to contribute pictures, videos, songs, ideas, drawings, or anything else they could digitize for a "first-ever electronic anthropology project" to document human life in 2006.
Submissions could be uploaded via the Internet to regionalized "Yahoo Time Capsule" Web sites. Suggested topics included love, anger, fun, sorrow, faith, beauty, hope, and "you."
Yahoo will celebrate the project with a grand three-day ceremony at The Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Mexico City, beginning October 25. The event will be Webcast, according to Yahoo.
Time capsule submissions deemed exceptional will be projected on the pyramid and all the digitized data will be beamed from the Mexican monument into outer space, according to Yahoo editor and chief Srinija Srinivasan.
The data will be converted into an optic stream and projected skyward, Yahoo executives 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," Srinivasan said. "It is there for whoever is out there."
Yahoo "invited a few folks" to get it started.
Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson provided some of her thoughts about Andalusia, while famed action film director John Woo put a bit of his first comic book in the time capsule, Srinivasan said. Author and alternative medicine guru Deepak Chopra provided ideas regarding how to end war, according to Yahoo.
"It is really a view, or lens, on what is going on in the world," Srinivasan said. "The idea is to capture this snapshot in time. We want and we expect to be surprised." Submissions will be accepted for 30 days, with the window closing November 8.
Yahoo said that time capsule contents would be archived on data storing hardware and buried at a secret spot on its campus in Sunnyvale, California. Copies of the contents would be given to the Smithsonian Institute recordings archives in Washington, as well as to The National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, according to Yahoo.
"It is fascinating that this is even possible," said Srinivasan, who has been with Yahoo since it was a fledgling company with just five workers. "Being online is much more pervasive around the globe."
"You don't have to be a gadget hound or tech savvy to know how to do these things any more. Who knows what it will be like in 10 years?"
Yahoo planned to open the time capsule when it celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2020. "Even though it might seem like a short future out, I can only imagine how we will look to our future selves given how rapidly things are changing," Srinivasan said.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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