> people in some other region or time can get a glimpse of the world you're in.

Yes. And we the people of a different time got a glimpse into the world they were in.

> A list of names is extremely unexciting.

Nevertheless that is what was important for them. That is their world. You don’t want a glimpse into their world. You want their world to conform to your idea of what it must feel like to be on a lighthouse.

Do you think humor and intrigue was invented in 2023? The lighthouse is irrelevant. The message in the bottle is relevant. "The world they live in" assuredly had creativity, humor, that could be tapped.

"Nevertheless..." so you basically agree its extremely unexciting? That's the point.

Would you click this post if it said "list creators of lighthouse found on piece of paper inside lighthouse"?

The point of a message in the bottle is that it's to make something legitimately interesting for the person reading (assuming it's not attempting to save a persons life stranded on an island)... Presumably the people doing this entire exercise were aware of that. When you take part in some activity, there is an expected amount of context which you are expected to have awareness of, similar to how when you make a movie, while you CAN kill off the main character in a cliffhanger unsatisfying way, you also have to expect people are going to hate your movie.

The fact that a bunch of engineers thought this was "most interesting" is, in itself not surprising I guess. But people lamenting that they could have done a lot better, is 100% valid.

> You want their world to conform to your idea of what it must feel like to be on a lighthouse for other "lighthouse people"

False. I literally want to read something interesting if I'm pulling a piece of paper out of a 100 year old bottle. There is an entire universe of topics besides a laundry list of names that could be done. They didn't because they thought this was what people 100 years in the future should see. Therefore, the entire experiment of "message in a bottle" is about as boring as it could possibly be. You literally couldn't make it more boring if you tried. Maybe a blank sheet of paper? The fact these names were meaningful to them, and the fact that this is an extremely boring outcome and leave people wanting more, can exist simultaneously.

I will mention the one saving grace is that it was left in the lighthouse

As an analogy, if I found 100 year old bottle in the floorboards of my house, a list of names could be made more interesting with... a photo, what their occupations are... what their favorite hobby or cherished item is, what used to be on the land before our house, what crops used to grow there, how the land was found, what kind of deed purchase it was, where they immigrated from. Literally 1000s of ideas to add detail.