The KEO spacecraft (whose name was chosen based on statistics to be easily pronounced) is a bizarre little space project which plans to pack one 4 page message from everyone on Earth into a specially shielded hard disk and send it flapping through space for 50,000 years.

It is a timecapsule, containing your messages to the future. Here’s mine:

The world could be a wonderful place if people just got on nicely together, trading their skills and products and never demanding that others to sacrifice for themselves. Unfortunately, the dominant philosophical ideas of our time (altruism, egalitarianism and utilitarianism) do not include a right (by which I mean a “moral endorsement”) of our natural desire to just “be”. To be who you are, to live for yourself and be happy – without bothering anyone or being bothered by anyone. Altruism, egalitarianism and utilitarianism force each individual person to be part of a “common good”; some grand plan for all mankind in which they are expected to sacrifice for others and to allow themselves to be controlled. People today are a means to the common end, not ends in themselves. Altruism, egalitarianism and utilitarianism are at the root of various related ideas in economics and politics which get in the way of a free prosperous world. I would like to think that before this capsule returns to Earth we would have abandoned this idea of a “common good” which we must all obey and by atomising ourselves politically, we will have blossomed economically and culturally. People fear this idea now, believing that an atomised society will be a colder darker place but I believe it will be a warmer kinder brighter place. My hope for you is that this is where you live.

A hat tip of sorts to this depressing BBC infographic.