Hi
Assume I will pass on before 2050. I would like to send (surprise) greetings to my daughter, arriving on or about the day of her birthday in 2057 (perhaps again in 2068). How? - Paul_in_Harrogate
Time capsule? Also those e-greeting card sites let you send their cards at dates in the future, though I’m not sure how far in advance they’ll let you go. Plus you have to hope your daughter has the same e-mail address in 2057/58.
That’s far enough in the future that you can’t assume any technological solution will work. Even if your machinery functions perfectly 50-ish years from now, the rest of the machinery it relies on for delivery will almost certainly be different enough to not interoperate.
50 years ago you’d have set up an electro-mechanical timer attached to a telex or TWX machine. But those networks were torn down a few years ago so when your perfectly functional telex or TWX machine woke up, it would never have gotten the equivalent of a dial tone to call out on. Result: mission failure.
50 years from now we won’t be using SMTP and IPv4 to move mail & data packets respectively. At least I hope we won’t.
So that leaves people. My advice is to write a message on quality paper & leave it with somebody you trust who you expect will still be alive in 2050 or whenever. And while you’re alive, keep reminding them about how important this it. They may still lose it or forget it, but the more you reinforce the point, the less likely that is.
For e-mail, there’s http://www.futureme.org/ and http://www.leave-a-message.net/
I have no idea how reliable they are, and what are the odds that the service will be still be running in 2057, the recipient is going to be using the same e-mail address, and the message is going to make it through spam filters? Still, it’s FREE!
In the Back to the Future series, someone sent a Western Union telegram to the future, but I guess that’s not an option anymore.
ETA: I’m sure I’ve seen movies in which some lawyer shows up with a sealed letter from the hero’s long-departed relative, but those would be movies, and you’d need to find a lawyer who’s very young, healthy, and trustworthy or a law firm that you can trust to still be in business nearly 50 years from now.
That was my immediate thought. Western Union doesn’t do that anymore, but there’s always iTelegram.
I’d give the letter to a law firm or a bank, preferably one that’s been around for a long time. That’s still no guarantee, as old law firms and old banks close from time to time. But perhaps the successor firm would inherit the responsibility. You might leave an endowment that would pay an annual fee to the custodian.
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This was what I was going to suggest. In addition to paying an annual fee to the custodian, you could add a bonus or reward for successful delivery.
Look for a very conservative long-lived business. Or maybe several to hedge your bets. Doc Brown had the advantage that he knew Western Union was still around in 1955, but you’ll just have to make your best shot.
Doc Brown also knew exactly where Marty would be and when. The OP will need to supply the delivery firm a bunch of current personal info about the recipient that will help them track her down in 2057. SSN, at minimum.
*** Ponder