In this culture of instant information, some Microsoft Corp. researchers are pursuing a radical notion — the concept of saving messages for delivery in decades, centuries or more.

The project, dubbed "immortal computing," would let people store digital information in physical artifacts and other forms to be preserved and revealed to future generations, and maybe even to future civilizations.

After all, when looking that far in the future, you never know who the end users might be.

[T]his is a Microsoft Research project. Sometimes those turn into products, or contribute to them, and sometimes they don't. The researchers declined to say if they have a working prototype.