Make Me Smart The human story behind a digital time capsule
Dec 2, 2025
David Ewalt, Editor-in-chief of Scientific American and creator of the Forbes email time capsule project, shares insights into his two-decade journey of digital messages. He discusses the innovative design of a 20-year delivery system amid evolving technology. Ewalt highlights the importance of human custodianship in preserving digital communication and reveals the emotional responses from recipients discovering their archived messages. His personal reflection on his own time capsule message offers a glimpse into his past ambitions.
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Communication Spans Time And Species
- David M. Ewalt framed communication broadly, from networking tech to cross-species signals and time-delayed messages.
- The Forbes time capsule explored communicating across time as a distinct, meaningful dimension of connection.
Design Redundancy Into Long-Term Systems
- Build redundancy across independent hosts so long-term systems can self-check and recover.
- Program servers to ping each other and take action if peers go dark to ensure scheduled deliveries.
Hedge Risk With Diverse Hosts
- Host critical preservation services with different kinds of organizations to hedge existential risk.
- Mix legacy media, large tech, and small dedicated operators for complementary strengths.