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My first question when I read this prompt was, how long will the time capsule be sealed up?
If it’s something like 50 or 100 years, I’ll bet we’ll still have a great deal of knowledge about the books that were around now.
If it’s 1000 years from now, future generations might have forgotten a lot of what we know today.
Then again, we still have books in print now that were written thousands of years ago. I’d want this time capsule to be as historically useful as possible, so my answers will be a little off the beaten path as I try to come up with things that future historians would be excited to receive.
A Book of Covid-19 Memories by Ordinary Folks. That is to say, let’s include the stories of teachers, healthcare workers, morticians, people who were homeless, grocery store clerks and other frontline workers, people who caught Covid-19, people who were diagnosed with Long Covid after their original infection ended, and others who aren’t always included in history books.
A Photo Essay Book About Life in the 2020s. They’d include photos and brief descriptions of the people in them from as many different cultures and countries as possible.
A Book or Booklet of Predictions About the Future. Wouldn’t it be interesting for future generations to see what we thought their lives might be like in X number of years? I know I love reading predictions of life in 2020 that previous generations compiled.
A Book of Descriptions of the Daily Lives of Ordinary People. For example, they could talk about what they ate, wore, did, read, watched, and thought about. The more details, the better.
The photo essay is a great one. Our local library has the large volumes of the old Time Life Series and I love looking through those.
That’s so cool! Yeah, I love looking through books like that, too.
I love your choices. And I agree, it’s hard not to imagine information about Covid 19 being part of the time capsule, since it’s sort of ruling all our lives right now.
Thank you. 🙂
Thanks for coming by and I absolutely LOVE your answers… they are awesome and right not spot!
Aww, thanks! I appreciate that.
I love all of those ideas.
I’m happy to hear that. 🙂
Great choices! I like the picture book idea the most. I think I would like to look at the way we live in pictures.
Thank you. 🙂
These are great ideas. They will really inform the future.
Thank you!
I like your choices, particularly the one about covid essays.
Thank you!
A book about covid, if written now, would be out of date in six months! The challenge is to put down the immediacy without losing the long view.
That said, this may interest you!
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/11/vaxxers-by-sarah-gilbert-and-catherine-green-until-proven-safe-by-geoff-manaugh-and-nicola-twilley-reviews
Well, I was thinking more of after it ended. But that is a good point. 🙂
Thanks for the article. I enjoyed reading it.
Excellent ideas. I especially like the Covid one.
Thank you!