I wrote an email that will be sent 49 years from now
After being a frequent user of Gmail’s ‘Schedule Send’ feature – I wanted to find out exactly how far in the future I could schedule an email.
To my surprise, I found out it’s 49 years and 11 months!
Amazing.
So of course, with this discovery, I decided to schedule an email for 49 years into the future. Very responsible.
An Email Version of a ‘Message in a Bottle’
In my eyes, I see this email as having similarities to a ‘Message in a bottle’ but with a modern twist.
Just like a message in a bottle, there’s no guarantee someone will actually receive or read my message.
And just like a message in a bottle, it could be lost forever in a vast ocean. This time, the vast ocean of internet rather than the actual ocean.
There’s actually a Wikipedia page on the ‘Message in a Bottle’ concept, check out there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_in_a_bottle
What could go wrong?
Well, a lot.
Here’s just a small list of risks I’ve identified:
- Google could be gone in 49 years
- Google could shut down Gmail
- Google could shut down the ‘Schedule Send’ feature before my message is sent
- Email as we know it today could be deprecated
- The email addresses that I put down as recipients could no longer be in use
And that’s just to name a few potential issues.
Where did I send the email?
This was a tough question to answer.
To maximise the likelihood of my message being received, I decided to send the email to 1) people I’m close to and 2) organisations that might be interested in a message 49 years from the past and likely to be in existence in 49 years time.
Those two requirements led to shortlisting only a few organisations — basically Libraries, Museums and State Archive Departments in Australia.
From those shortlisted institutions, I then had to figure out the right email address to send it to.
I decided to go with common generic email addresses for those institutions, for example, info@ and enquiries@ and also email addresses that have been commonly in existence since the beginning of the web eg. webmaster@
I won’t list exhaustively all the emails I included as I want to try to make this future email as much of a discovery / surprise as possible!
What did I write in the email?
A quick snapshot of my life as a 26 year old Australian male living through the year 2020. That’s all really.
Although the snapshot doesn’t seem very interesting now, it’s my hope that just like a message a bottle, the discovery of this message from the past could give a little spark to someone’s day and give people a new appreciation for the past.
So, fingers crossed my 49-years-into-the-future email makes it thru! 🤞
