Time Capsule — Part 3

Imagine Future

I developed a time capsule concept in my previous assignment meant to collect people’s everyday memories and feelings, in the form of oral capsules. A calendar indicates when the memory was collected, and people who take capsules will be able to recall these memories and feel past emotions again.

What would happen if your time capsule was discovered in 2146?

The third part is going to be all about storytelling so people can visualize and understand what the Time Capsule is.

125 years from now is hard to imagine, but it’s fascinating to think about how advanced everything would be and how silly we seem to them. As everything becomes smarter and people become more isolated, I am concerned that people in the future may not empathize with others the way we do.

In the design process, we usually come up with scenarios after we have learned the problem deeply. But in this case, I have to work backwards and consider the scenarios in which future humans will interact with my time capsule.

My biggest challenge is that I don’t know them.

• Who would be the first to discover it?
• In what way would it be discovered?
• Would a time capsule from 125 years ago be useful to them?
• What would they try to understand about its function and meaning?
• Would it be misused? How?

Even though I have never been a fan of Sci-Fi or Time Travel stories, I think it can be a challenging area to write about. In most Hollywood Time Travel movies, people still share the same characteristics as we do today, but either the story will be set in a strange environment or on an impossible mission to survive. The characters would be strange if they didn’t even think and feel like modern human beings, so that their entire mental model would be different.

As a result, I wrote a scenario that was inspired by Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.

image source

The novel depicts the story of a family who discover an old man with wings on his back in their house, and how strange things unravel. I think future humans may find that the time capsule is strange enough that they cannot perceive it as normal.

Scenario

Visualize Each Step

The following illustrations were created using the Blush plugin in Figma.

1. In 2146, humans have reached a very high level of intelligence, but emotional intelligence has not developed much. People are migrating to other planets and the Earth is no longer filled with as many residents as before. This leaves many lonely and depressed.

2. A calendar from 2021 was found in a flea market, a woman called B bought it and took it home.

3. B examined it carefully and found a manual instruction.

4 She took a picture and posted it on social media, but she doesn’t believe that the time capsules are from 2021.

5. Immediately after posting the capsule, some strangers offered to try it.

6. B sent a capsule to one of them as the stranger agreed to take responsibility if anything goes wrong.

7. The stranger came back silent, but he wants to buy out the entire time capsule.

8. B is so curious that she decides to try a capsule herself. It appears to be an odd world. There was something called “feelings” that people no longer talk about. In the capsule, she had a dream-like experience. She is also confused about what is going on.

9. More and more people are reaching out to buy the capsules from her.

10. In order to see how other people react, B builds a small cafe in her backyard that sells time capsule experience.

12. She would set a table for guests, and bring a time capsule. Guests would take that capsule and see the world of 2021.

13. Some people had dramatic reactions after taking the capsule, smiling for the first time in their lives, others crying and feeling relieved, and at the end they hugged each other and felt grateful.

14. The number of people who came just for the capsules surprised her. As a result, she increased the price.

15. B made a lot of money selling capsules, but when she was ready to serve a customer, she found out the 2021 calendar was missing…

Final Video

Video link

Audio: TypeCast

Editing: iMovie