Email into the Future

March 6, 2005 11:46 PM

How can I send email to myself in the future? Or, more broadly, is there a way to do so reliably?

I want to send emails to myself that are guaranteed to arrive say, five years from now, ten years from now, maybe even 25 years from now. I want to do this once (now) and then not worry about it.

I've heard, I think, of services that do this for you. But how can I know that they will be around then. Does anyone have an ingenious solution to this?

In case you're wondering how I even know that my recipient email address will be around, I am using the "lifetime" forwarding email address given to me by my college which is Harvard. So, I am counting on Harvard being around in some form for 20 years, which I think is a safe bet.

posted by vacapinta to computers & internet (16 answers total)

Why not just mail yourself using postal mail and seal the envelope with "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL YOUR 45TH BIRTHDAY?" Just stuff it in your scrapbook or keepsake box.

That would be a touch more reliable than a pay or free service.
posted by nearlife at 12:01 AM on March 7, 2005

I think Yahoo! has the closest thing to what you're looking for at http://calendar.yahoo.com. You'll have to maintain a free account with Yahoo! (though you can have all emails sent to your Harvard account), and you'll have to count on them being around in some form for 20 years.

I have some more thoughts on how to work out some of the finer details of this (using the above solution), feel free to email me.
posted by onalark at 12:05 AM on March 7, 2005

futureme

"here's the story:
two fellas started this so that you could write yourself a letter to be delivered at a later date. we've all had to do them in high school and college. it's sorta cool to receive a letter from yourself about where you thought you'd be a year (two years? more?) later. FutureMe.org is based on the principle that memories are less accurate than emails. we strive for accuracy. "
posted by peacay at 12:09 AM on March 7, 2005

i'm not sure a technological solution is going to be certain enough - i'd suggest talking to an established firm of solicitors and leaving a dated request with them. you might also make it more general, so that they make some effort to contact you even if email no longer exists.
(i've never done this, but it's the kind of thing that happens in books...)
posted by andrew cooke at 3:17 AM on March 7, 2005

http://futuremail.bensinclair.com/

I think that's pretty much exactly what you're looking for!
posted by nafrance at 3:43 AM on March 7, 2005

Obligatory Kirk dies episode reference (with obligatory Shatner is old reference). This is a very interesting idea.
posted by ParisParamus at 4:23 AM on March 7, 2005

Yahoo's calendar only goes up to 2011. If you need a piece of email 10 years into the future, yahoo's calendar won't help.

And who knows if email as-we-know-it will be around in 10 years.

A much better solution, albeit technically illegal, would be to write an internet worm which creates cron jobs that'll send you an email at a specific time X years later. When that time comes, even if email doesn't work anymore, the resultant media coverage will hopefully remind you of what was in the email. ;-)
posted by yeoz at 4:52 AM on March 7, 2005

Er, on second glance, Yahoo's calender does go through 2037 or so... ;(
posted by yeoz at 4:56 AM on March 7, 2005

Oddly enough, both mailtothefuture.com and emailtothefuture.com do exactly what you want. No way of telling whether either will be around for the long haul, though.

Another iffy possibility would be to mail it to yourself. Apple's iCal, for example, can send an e-mail as an alarm for an event.

I like yeoz's solution for its future-proofing. Perhaps this would be a good project for The Long Now people.
posted by adamrice at 5:15 AM on March 7, 2005

If you have an email account forever, do you also have shell and web accounts forever? If so:

Use the unix "at" command or a clever cron job

Use a free web calendaring system with email reminders (like WebCalendar)
posted by sandking at 5:48 AM on March 7, 2005

I don't know whether to trust those sites. If I were going to send myself mail from the past, it might be personal things that I wouldn't want the site administrators (or whoever inherits their data) to read and mock and publish on their "Look at the lame messages to the future!" web site in 2013.

So, what would be the best way to encrypt data sent to yourself through one of those sites? And to remember the password -- send yourself a password hint from one site and a message from the other?

Or, just for fun, what about something self-contained, like a time capsule holding a wireless transmitter set to wake up in X years and send you e-mail? What would it cost to build something like that? You could seal it in a wall and no one would know about it until it woke up and started transmitting. But it might have to be something with no moving parts and a battery that wouldn't run down and memory that wouldn't decay and...

Maybe it could be a cell phone that would call you. Imagine being called in ten years by yourself. And you think it's a prank or a salesman, so you hang up on your youth.
posted by pracowity at 6:49 AM on March 7, 2005

The safest bet would probably be a calendar program on your own computer. When you move to a new computer, you'll of course transfer your calendar data along. Assuming you back up sufficiently, you should be all set.

Doing that AND Yahoo! Calendar or something would add redundancy, which is always a good thing in IT.
posted by callmejay at 9:01 AM on March 7, 2005

Use a real E-mail program like Eudora and simply queue it in the future, taking care to keep it in the Out box until that time.
posted by joeclark at 10:48 AM on March 7, 2005

For timescales of 1-10 years, you can simply reserve a domain name and have a little CGI program that checks every time someone accesses the site. Time to send the e-mail? Away it goes!

For 10-25 years, the lawyer solution given above seems the best. Or, take out a mortgage and have as a condition that they have to hold a letter of yours that they will send you upon receipt of the last payment.

Give your nieces and nephews (or sons and daughters) bonds that mature in 20-odd years, along with a note inside. Guarantee in their mid-20s they'll remember that bond, 'cause they'll need the money.

Finally: Give all of your friends an encrypted version of the e-mail, and ask them to give it to you in 25 years. Spread it around as much as possible.

posted by brool at 11:05 AM on March 7, 2005

Domain names expire/get-hijacked, lawyers die, bonds get sold before maturation, friends move out of reach...

... Hmm, I'm suddenly reminded of the Western Union delivery in one of the Back to the Future movies, where the Doc gets stuck in the past and uses Western Union to get a message to Marty in the future ...

I wonder if any of the major delivery services will let you delay a delivery for a couple years ...
posted by yeoz at 2:40 PM on March 7, 2005

mailtothefuture.com
posted by punkrockrat at 3:46 PM on March 7, 2005