That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
A ‘Time Capsule’ is an ingenious device invented by someone who wanted to build something that had come under ecological or otherwise scrutiny, so wanted to magic away any ill-feeling that the construction was generating. In layman’s terms (Wikipedia) “a time capsule is a historic cache of goods and/or information, usually intended as a method of communication with people in the future”; otherwise known as a water-logged tin with assorted junk inside. It conjures images in your mind of Doctor Who landing at the University and extracting what can only be described as a shower pod before using it as a ‘time capsule’ in which to capture some mould based alien civilisation and suspend them in time.
Of course the capsule is somewhat smaller than a shower, measuring in at what the website describes as a maximum of 550mm x 550mm x 250mm deep. More the size of kitchen bin than an intergalactic shower, but that’s barely noticeable as the measurements are given in exciting millimetres.
The capsule panders to our (the people of 2009’s) two base urges: 1) The need to be endlessly nostalgic about how great both the past and right now is and 2) Winning!
So why, when I read about the ‘capsule’ on the University’s website,did I get a warm and fuzzy feeling inside even though I suffered the trauma of the disappointing Blue Peter time capsule? Because the capsule panders to our (the people of 2009’s) two base urges: 1) The need to be endlessly nostalgic about how great both the past and right now is and 2) Winning!
To elaborate – the capsule allows us to show people of the future what 2009 is like, because the people of the future will obviously have become so absorbed in the futuristic space-age world that they will have forgotten how to use the internet – a resource that has an almost incalculable amount of information about most of Britain down to the most mundane details. They will also have destroyed all libraries and personal computers that contain information about the world today. Therefore the twenty objects which are being selected from competition winners at Lord Deramore's and Badger Hill Primary Schools as well as Staff and Student’s at the University will be crucial to Historians as well as ordinary people in the future if they are to understand us.
Anyone that’s ever watched Channel 4 knows that all know that understanding ourselves and celebrating our culture and history is important, otherwise why would we create ‘100 greatest films/songs/television shows/books/people/grannies’? In order to pander to our own narcissism as well as insuring that we’re included in amongst the people of 2109’s ‘100 greatest years’ we had best include some information about ourselves.
My votes for an item to go into the time capsule are for some sort of multimedia device which has recordings of the things that have received the greatest number of hits on ‘Youtube’ as of the day the capsule is to be buried, because in 100 years time a sneezing panda and a badly dressed middle-aged spinster will still be entertaining.
For all those wanting to enter the time capsule competition the deadline is this Friday, 26th June.
a time capsule? Isn't that the premise of "Knowing"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHw8URgDvxM
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