Book chapter
The Time Capsule’s Futures
Remembrance of Things Present
University of Chicago Press
06/12/2019
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574271.003.0009
Abstract
The epilogue traces the changing approaches and attitudes to time capsules in the decades since the sealing of Westinghouse’s in 1940. The deployment of time capsules with ever-greater timespans and payloads, by corporations and space agencies hoping to showcase nuclear and space-age technologies, began to provoke skepticism by the 1970s, in particular toward the implicit hubris and “universalist essentialism” of such projects. Yet, rather than positing a decline from some golden age of the time capsule, this epilogue emphasizes its ongoing mutation and proliferation. The time capsule has become vernacularized since the 1970s as private individuals appropriated the practice, and has been further stimulated by the Internet revolution. While noting some negative tendencies of recent time capsules (such as their solipsism, their renunciation of any utopian vision or unified message, and their exploitability by corporations), the epilogue concludes by highlighting recent efforts by environmentalists and artists to reinvigorate the imaginative possibilities and political potential of this tradition.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The Time Capsule’s Futures
- Creators
- Nick Yablon
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Remembrance of Things Present
- DOI
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226574271.003.0009
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 06/12/2019
- Academic Unit
- History; American Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9984025541702771
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