• Software: abstractmachine:crypt
• Concept: Douglas Edric Stanley & Ragnar Helgi Olafsson
• Development: Douglas Edric Stanley

What better way to defer the New Year than to send a message using the abstractmachine:crypt?

To use the service, simply enter the target email and your message. The abstractmachine server will encrypt your message for some random period between 1 and 365 days, after which it will decrypt the message and send it to the email address you indicated.

This encryption device can also be considered a temporally deferred postal delivery device. It can be used for new year’s resolutions, unreliable loved ones, or perhaps some horribly bad news that you just cannot bring upon yourself to deliver. Deferral can offer the necessary distance to make all of the above easier to manage.

The idea came from some far more elegant ideas Ragnar had, but lacking budget and time, we are currently in a little temporal deferral of our own. It can also be considered a response to Fabrice Gallis's concept of the crypt as time-generating machine, i.e. another plot for slow real-time systems.