Letters into the future edited Oct 2020
There are two tools that I don't think everyone knows about.
One called "futureme" and the other called the "dead hand switch".
Both these services allow the delayed delivery of emails.
You can send email to your future self, or to anyone else, for that matter with a specific delivery date and time in the future.
I could for example send email to my grand daughter on her twentieth birthday.
Or an email to myself ten years from now, to make sure that I am firmly connected with the dreams and aspirations that I hold dear today.
The second service is called "dead hand switch" which gets its name from a legendary cold war relic.
When the policy of mutual destruction was at its peak between the Superpowers, Russia worried that if their highest leadership was destroyed in an attack, they might lose the ability to retaliate.
So they conceived the dead hand switch that would launch against, just about everyone, unless it were told regularly at preset intervals, that all was well.!
This is not a fictional device! It actually exists. Check it out.
With this new service, you send an email to loved ones and every few months you get a reminder to reset the timer. Some day when you are unable to reset the timer, you will be assumed dead or disabled.
A virtual, and personal will.
The question is, if you could speak to your future self, or your grown up child of the future, what would you have to say.?
Remember you would not know who would be living, and who would be gone.
You would not know about new children, new spouses, new technologies and political turmoils.
You would be, from the stone ages, with regards technology.
So what could you give these people of the future that would be of value.?
This is the question that I have been grappling with over the past few days.
And I supposed that one could remind them to floss, use sunscreen, remember God, be good and so forth but I am sure that they will have plenty of people to nag them in the future and the last thing they might want, would be somebody reaching out across time to tell them to flush the loo after they poo.
You could describe the time you lived in, and how happy or sad you were at this particular moment.
The future people might be able to laugh at your worries, that might have been over nothing.
All the perils that you live in fear of might seem trivial and irrelevant to the future people, and they might learn not to worry about these things in their lives. Lives that would be dust in a few years anyway.
That would be a valuable gift.
If you told them about the people, and things that you love and cared for, they might look up those people and things. Those long forgotten and neglected, and give them all a second look.
Most of all I found that, I wanted to live in the future.
I would give anything to live another hundred years.
So many things have begun that could lead to an amazing next century, and I am sad that I won't be around to see it all.
One called "futureme" and the other called the "dead hand switch".
Both these services allow the delayed delivery of emails.
You can send email to your future self, or to anyone else, for that matter with a specific delivery date and time in the future.
I could for example send email to my grand daughter on her twentieth birthday.
Or an email to myself ten years from now, to make sure that I am firmly connected with the dreams and aspirations that I hold dear today.
The second service is called "dead hand switch" which gets its name from a legendary cold war relic.
When the policy of mutual destruction was at its peak between the Superpowers, Russia worried that if their highest leadership was destroyed in an attack, they might lose the ability to retaliate.
So they conceived the dead hand switch that would launch against, just about everyone, unless it were told regularly at preset intervals, that all was well.!
This is not a fictional device! It actually exists. Check it out.
With this new service, you send an email to loved ones and every few months you get a reminder to reset the timer. Some day when you are unable to reset the timer, you will be assumed dead or disabled.
A virtual, and personal will.
The question is, if you could speak to your future self, or your grown up child of the future, what would you have to say.?
Remember you would not know who would be living, and who would be gone.
You would not know about new children, new spouses, new technologies and political turmoils.
You would be, from the stone ages, with regards technology.
So what could you give these people of the future that would be of value.?
This is the question that I have been grappling with over the past few days.
And I supposed that one could remind them to floss, use sunscreen, remember God, be good and so forth but I am sure that they will have plenty of people to nag them in the future and the last thing they might want, would be somebody reaching out across time to tell them to flush the loo after they poo.
You could describe the time you lived in, and how happy or sad you were at this particular moment.
The future people might be able to laugh at your worries, that might have been over nothing.
All the perils that you live in fear of might seem trivial and irrelevant to the future people, and they might learn not to worry about these things in their lives. Lives that would be dust in a few years anyway.
That would be a valuable gift.
If you told them about the people, and things that you love and cared for, they might look up those people and things. Those long forgotten and neglected, and give them all a second look.
Most of all I found that, I wanted to live in the future.
I would give anything to live another hundred years.
So many things have begun that could lead to an amazing next century, and I am sad that I won't be around to see it all.
Today is 16th October 2020 and it's been almost 5 years since I wrote the above piece.
This morning my daughter burst into my room asking me if I was OK.
Seems that she received the mail that was meant to fire upon my death.
There clearly was a misfire.
It's lucky that I hadn't used this to redistribute my estate.
So the moral of the story is a dead hand switch is dangerous as it could trigger in error.
Comments