UT prof offers compact twist on time capsule

The idea of time capsules is attractive. Plant some artifacts in a container to be opened by a future generation who can look back and either admire our foresight or perhaps chuckle at our foibles.

But too often, time capsules don't work. When they are opened, the contents have been ruined by rust, moisture, or microbes. Many time capsules are forgotten or lost. And some are just a bit too long-range: For example, one buried during a prelude to the 1939 New York World's Fair is to be opened 5,000 years hence, in the year 6939.

Sonny Ariss, a management professor at the University of Toledo College of Business Administration, has a simpler plan that should avoid those pitfalls.

His time capsule - shaped like a UT rocket and containing a collection of current business data, forecasts, and thought, along with a smattering of today's technology - will be in plain view and it is to be opened 10 years after it is sealed March 28.

Mr. Ariss' theory is that much will change in the business world in just a decade, and many of the contributors to the capsule idea will still be around campus to enjoy the results.

Sonny Ariss has assembled a collection of items to go into the rocket time capsule.

"After a hundred or a thousand years, it loses its practicality," he said.

He decided to do a time capsule project to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the beginning of UT's business college and the 10th anniversary of the executive MBA program, both of which occur this year.

The metal rocket, painted in UT's blue and gold colors, stands about 3 feet high and is a foot in diameter. "We can put a lot of things in it," Mr. Ariss said. He plans to place the rather heavy capsule somewhere on fifth floor of Stranahan Hall, in or near the business dean's office. And he is considering hanging a plastic replica of the rocket in the atrium of Stranahan as a reminder of the real thing.

office. And he is considering hanging a plastic replica of the rocket in the atrium of Stranahan as a reminder of the real thing.

Mr. Ariss, who also is director of UT's Small Business & Entrepreneurial Institute, plans to collect a variety of data on interest rates, inflation, wages, unemployment, energy costs, currency-exchange rates, the price of a Big Mac hamburger, and stock prices, as well as magazine and newspaper articles - and a complete edition of The Blade.

The articles will cover such concepts as outsourcing, globalization, and continuous improvement, and there will be commentaries on the current state of technology, global trade, military conflicts, natural disasters, health care, and the Google phenomenon, he said.

Among the artifacts will be a dust jacket from the best-seller The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman, which deals with the impact of globalization.

That book is required reading in the executive MBA program, in which students offered thoughts about business and the economy a decade hence.

Some of their predictions: The U.S. standard of living will decline because of accelerating globalization; China and India will have more important roles in the world economy; more domestic companies will be forced to have operations in Asia and India; and the United States will adopt a national health-care system similar to Canada's.

Among the technology-oriented artifacts are a couple of business videotapes, but, Mr. Ariss said, "Technology that works today may not work 10 years from now."

The idea of putting the materials into a rocket came from an executive MBA student, Eva Marie Kupec, an analyst with Dana Corp., and the design was done by Michael Pulhuj, another student, who is an engineer with Glasstech Inc., Mr. Ariss said.

The professor has received many ideas from others, but he said he welcomes any and all ideas for contents.

What are we thinking, or doing, in the business world now that might be instructive a decade from now?