The Book of Me, Part 8: My Techie Time Capsule

This is my entry prompted by The Book of Me, Written By You project created by Julie Goucher of the Anglers Rest blog. The concept: a series of blogging and writing prompts that help family historians capture their own memories and write about themselves. Go to http://www.anglers-rest.net for more information.

This week's assignment:

The continuation of the 15 month, weekly writing project about my life and memories, created by Julie Goucher.

The prompt for week 8 is Time Capsule

1. You can choose who to create the time capsule for as that will influence what you put (or would put into your time capsule)

2. The creation of a time capsule
a. you can do this in the literal sense or
b. you can simply write what you would place into your time capsule and why. It is much more fun to create though!

* You may choose to create a time capsule for your children, or a niece/nephew, for grandchildren – A physical item that you will give to a named person.

*Why have you chosen that person and when do you intend for them to have it?

*You may choose to create a time capsule of your home and leave it for someone in the future to find.

*You may want to create a time capsule relating to an actual event or anniversary

*If you create a physical time capsule, what did you choose to use as your capsule and why?

OK, so I struggled with this one at first.  Having survived some adversity, I don't place much importance on "stuff."  That's a good thing, for me personally.  So initially, I couldn't really think of much that was worthy of a time capsule project.  For me, it would be, at the most, pictures and notes to ones who come after me, hoping that they knew who I was and that they knew the things that were most important to me were the ones I loved.

Image courtesy of hin255 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I didn't worry about the pictures, though.  Most of my photographs have been scanned and are on my computer, a backup hard drive, the cloud, an off-line backup service, etc.  I've also distributed them to family members on CD.  My friend gave me the idea of putting current technology in a Time Capsule, to show what we're using in the present day to communicate, research, preserve, and, well, do just about anything.

In the spirit of being a techie geek, here's what I would put in my Time Capsule:

1)  My MacBook Pro.

Image courtesy Apple Inc.

 It's on my lap more hours of the day than it's not.  It's my link to so many things--social media, research for my genealogy, the virtual friends I've made, the long-distance friends I don't see as often as I'd like, and too many games when I'm not in the mood to do something constructive.

Copyright Microsoft Corporation.

2)  My husband's laptop PC.  It's a reminder to me of why I switched to Mac--mostly because of Internet Explorer and Windows' Vista operating system, both of which required me to frequently boot my computer and utter very bad words.  I don't miss it, and though my Mac did cost me more, what it saves me in aggravation and stress reduction is priceless.

3) My phone.  I remember my first cell phone, about 1993, and the difference between it and my current "smartphone" is amazing.  The functionality on a typical smartphone is mind-blowing.

Image courtesy of Harmonix

4) My tv.  It connects to the internet, allows me to play Rock Band, play 3-D movies, and even serves as a monitor for my Mac if I should want to share a video or some other content from my computer with the family. 

Image courtesy of kangshutters
at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

5) My satellite dish/DVR. Out of date now, IMO.












I studied Computer Technology in college.  This was at a time where the programming languages being taught included Cobol, Assembler, Fortran, etc. I had to use what was called a punch-card machine to write my code.  Each line of code went onto a punch card.  The assembled stack of cards with all of my code would be fed into a card reader, which then input my program to the computer, where it was "compiled" and executed.  

The computer that was used back then (late 70's), taking up an entire room, had less power than my Mac.  Pretty amazing.  And nowadays, a new chipset, processor, etc., comes out so frequently that if you wanted to have the latest technology, you'd be buying a new computer, phone, tablet, etc., all the time.

That is the point of my Time Capsule project--to show the changes in technology.  It's not sentimental or personal, really, but reflects my passion for all things techie.  For a long time, especially before the invention of computers and the availability of personal computers (early 80's), technology advanced much more slowly.  Now, change is explosively rapid--and I can only imagine what kinds of gadgets and toys will be available to future generations.