––What do you think/hope people in the year 2058 will make of your selections?

Dalton: Who can say? I am 36. I hope to be around to defend them.

King: Well, I hope they’ll get a small, but accurate snapshot of our world: a world at war, a world of valiance, a world of pessimism, a world of bare-assed dancing, a world where Lou Dobbs was up to no damn good.

What do I think they’ll make of the capsule? I think the people of 2058 are going to be fully aware of the consequences of our behavior, and therefore they won’t have much patience for our explanations. They’re the ones who are going to have to make the peace and build the levees.

Langer: The fun of burying a time capsule would be to attempt to change history—or at least to attempt to change perceptions of history. For this reason, I would try to fill the time capsule with items that perhaps weren’t popular during our time but should have been, with objects that are perhaps all too unreflective of the early 21st Century, giving those who stumble upon it the opportunity to reassess our times.

Reifler: You know what? If there are people alive on the planet in 50 years to open my time capsule, that’s enough for me. Would they have my verbal explanations along with the objects? If so, I really hope they smile and shake their heads at the darkness and confusion I felt about humanity in 2008. I hope that Outkast wins.


Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel WE’RE SO FAMOUS, editor of DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME: CONTEMPORARY WRITERS ON THE FILMS OF JOHN HUGHES, and co-founder of POST ROAD, a national literary magazine based out of New York and Boston.