Originally published January 6 2006
People can send emails to themselves in the future
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
FutureMe, along with several other websites, allow people to send emails that will not be delivered until several years from now (to their future self). However, even if people keep the same email address, there is no guarantee the message will arrive.
In the year 2009, on the 25th of April, a man named Greg is supposed to get an e-mail.
It will remind him that he is his own best friend and worst enemy, that he once dated a woman named Michelle, and that he planned to major in computer science.
The e-mail was sent by Greg himself - through a Web site called FutureMe.org.
It is one of the messages open to public view at the site, and Greg used only his first name.
FutureMe is one of a handful of Web sites that let people send e-mails to themselves and others for delivery years in the future.
They are technology's answer to time capsules, trading on people's sense of curiosity, accountability and nostalgia.
"Messages into the future is something that people have always sought to do," said Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, a research group.
Matt Sly came up with the concept for FutureMe.org four years ago after recalling how, during his education, he had been assigned to write letters to himself.
Sly, 29, who teamed with 31-year-old Jay Patrikios of San Francisco on the project, said the site has made $58 through donations.
He says it is not a reminder service and that users should think in the long term.
FutureMe and other service providers try to make the delivery process fail-safe through partnerships or back-up software, and they urge people to hang on to their e-mail addresses, but there's no ironclad guarantee that the message will ever arrive.
FutureMe lets people send messages for delivery as much as 30 years from now.
"We want people to think about their future and what their goals and dreams and hopes and fears are," he said.
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