A lot has happened in the first quarter of 2025. To commemorate what life is like at NIU right now, the Northern Star will be opening a time capsule sealed in April 2000 and creating a new one.
The time capsule opening and Northern Star Open House will be at 4 p.m. April 16 in the Peters Campus Life Building, Suite 175.
So here at the Northern Star, we want to ask you what we should put in the next time capsule, which will be opened in 2050.
Smartphone
Since the time capsule was last opened, cell phones have had a big change. In the year 2000, Nokia’s second generation phones were popular.
The first ones didn’t have color in the screen pixels, so you had to settle for black pixels on a gray-green screen. Its functionalities were limited to saving contacts, making calls, sending messages and maybe if you were lucky, you could get one with Sudoku or Snake. Now we have little computers in our pocket, with more calculation power than the Apollo 11 guidance computer.
So, surely for students of 2050, it will be interesting to see the digital gadgets we have, compare them with whatever they have in 2050 and say: Wow, that’s outdated.
Photo of the Northern Star Office
Probably few things are more shocking than finding out how people in the past did the same as us at work, with less resources and technology. If there is a photo of the Northern Star office in the time capsule, we will probably find the boxy computers they used, with a table full of cassettes and DVDs and other things that became outdated with the emergence of the digital electronic devices and the explosion of popularity and technology of wireless networks.
And not only the objects we work with, but the space in which we work has changed too. The office has gone under construction since 2000, the latest was just this semester. So if we have interest in seeing how the office was in 2000, people in 2050 will be interested in seeing how the office was in 2025.
NIU “No Luck Needed” T-Shirt
NIU’s football team is one of the bright spots of this university every year. However, there may not be any better moment than when the NIU football team went into South Bend, Indiana, and pulled off a historic upset against the University of Notre Dame.
NIU shocked the college football world by defeating the then No. 5 ranked Notre Dame with a score of 16-14. This win raised the morale on campus for over two weeks.
Vinyl Records and CDs
When the time capsule was sealed, vinyl records had slowly started to become irrelevant and CDs were the newest format for selling music. Nowadays, streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora have taken the world by storm. However, vinyl records have recently come back in style due to their nostalgia and CDs are becoming less popular.
By the time this new time capsule is opened, the way the world listens to music will be drastically different, so having physical items to show how people listen to music will be interesting for people in the future.
Results from last week’s poll: What restaurant would you add in the student center?
Chick-Fil-A – 52%
Panda Express – 15%
Panera Bread – 19%
Taco Bell – 7%
Other – 8%
