In this blog post I am going to talk about the Future Coast project that we looked at last week in class. It was definitely freaky listening to everyone’s voicemails from the future. There were a few voicemails that were more care-free that made me laugh, but there also were a few voicemails that gave me the chills and really freaked me out. The time stream that I picked out was mostly about global warming and about changes in the weather. Mostly my time stream was about the weather becoming increasingly hotter. I choose this time stream because I thought that it related most to what is happening right now for us. Even in Oregon we are having such a hotter winter term then we had last year. Last year we had two weeks where it snowed and this year it has barely rained at all. I thought that it would be interesting to make a time stream of that because I thought it would be the most relatable to everyone when they listened to it. One of the voicemails that I thought was the most interesting was a girl talking to her friend about going to Alaska for vacation. She was telling her friend about how much fun it was going to be, that it would be 90 degrees or hotter and to make sure not to forget her bathing suit.

I also found it interesting that there were a lot of voicemails that related to each other. It is crazy how the future is such a unknown mystery, yet we all have the same overall idea about what it might be like. I thought that this voicemail was a very interesting idea for someone to have and I think that it is just as affective as reading a short story or novel if not more effective.

I think that the Future Coast project is a very intelligent idea to make people pay attention about climate change. Our world is so invested in social media and this highlights that and forces people to participate and become aware about climate change. By making this sort of into a game it intrigues people to look more into it. I also believe that using the voicemails is very effective in making climate change real. We always talk about how the main problem with making people care about climate change is that it is not happening in the moment or it is not a “in your face” problem so people do not care about it. By using these voicemails, these problems seem real because you can relate to the emotions that are in the voices of the people leaving these voicemails. There were a few voicemails that were so raw and emotional that I found myself really caring for these people and wanting to help them. That is why Future Coast is so powerful. It causes people to feel real emotions about climate change which will make them want to participate in preventing it.