A new book archives the best posts from the FutureMe Web project— a chronicle of anonymous hopes and dreams

Future Me Amazon.com

Everyone at some point wishes she could talk with her "future self" and have some insight into how it's all going to turn out. Unfortunately—unless you count Miss Cleo's tele-clairvoyent services—technology hasn't given us a portal to the future yet. But it has improved upon the time capsule.

FutureMe.org, a Web site that lets you post emails to yourself which will be sent to your inbox up to 50 years from now. The project was widely blogged, NPR'ed, and showcased at Austria's Ars Electronica, the largest digital art museum in the world, as more than 400,000 people visited the site to send messages to themselves that were often funny and always poignant.

This spring, Sly and Patrikios published 280 of their favorite letters (users have the option of marking their posts "public but anonymous") in a book called Dear Future Me. The book includes fascinating notes from an Alzheimer's patient who wanted to preserve his memories, an email from a soldier on his way to Iraq, and many more of the deepest thoughts of strangers.

Thanks to Eric from Sneakmove for putting this on our radar today.

0 Comments

Popular Tags

Regular Features


138 years of Popular Science at your fingertips.

Innovation Challenges



Popular Science+ For iPad

Each issue has been completely reimagined for your iPad. See our amazing new vision for magazines that goes far beyond the printed page



Download Our App

Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone or Android phone with full articles, images and offline viewing



Follow Us On Twitter

Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed


February 2012: The Future of Fun

Science is reinventing play, from extreme sports to gamification to ridiculous roller coasters to the playgrounds of tomorrow, and this issue is chock full of fun. Also, on a less fun note: Did global warming destroy my hometown?


circ-top-header.gif
circ-cover.gif