Can you predict what might happen 250 years from now? It’s a difficult task, especially when you think about everything that’s occurred in the past 250 years. The world of 1776 is completely alien to those of us living in the 2020s. The people of 1776 were living before the widespread adoption of comforts like indoor plumbing. No one knew about fundamental scientific concepts like germ theory. The Wright Brothers weren’t even a gleam in their father’s eye. Here in 2026, we’ve run out of new ideas and have bet our chips on AI coming up with some fresh ones. So, of course, Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude was recently tasked with making several predictions for the year 2276, specifically involving California. As part of the America 250 celebrations, each state and U.S. territory has now contributed to a time capsule that will be buried in Philadelphia on July 4, 2026. Some states understood the assignment, with New Mexico including things like a bolo tie and Nevada placing poker chips in the 900-pound time capsule. But other states’ contributions were pathetic, with Kansas submitting a single page that lists government officials.
California arguably did the best job, including a qubit chip from the University of California, Berkeley, a fusion conductor segment from General Atomics, and a NASA photo of California from space. California also included the aforementioned predictions, which are obviously difficult to judge since we don’t know what the future holds. But we may as well take a look anyway.
