Martin can run a digi-
tal file through a laser
that engraves directly
onto a tablet with special
ceramic stains. Using
super-downsized text,
he can crowd up to five
400-page books on a
tablet. The result looks
like its own piece of art,
crammed letters blurring
into dense lines of peaks
and valleys.
Ideally, according to
Martin, the MOM tablets
ref lect three independent
information streams. The
first includes editorials from newspa-
pers around the world, from all sorts
of political and geographical points
of view. Several media companies
allow articles to f low into the archive
in hopes of creating daily snapshots
of our world.
The second stream is institutional
materials: scientific papers, art pro-
jects and popular songs, among oth-
er material, culled from universities
and corporations, awards commit-
tees and other institutions. Martin
said he might include theHarry Pot-
terseries.
The third stream is what Martin
classifies as personal. These are in-
dividuals’ stories, passions, or trib-
utes – anything, really – contribut-
ed by anyone. At the MOM website
you can type your deepest thoughts,
which will be translated to a tablet.
People can also design their own
personal tablet with text and images
and an option for a duplicate tablet to
be sent to their home, but these two
options come at a cost. To encourage
offerings from a variety of continents,
Martin puts a sliding scale on these
personal tablets, depending on the
GDP of your country. If you’re from
Malawi, it will cost just over US$2; if
from Switzerland, just over US$300.
The tablets run from the sweet to
the intense to just plain geeky. One
woman wrote a brief memoir about
how a video game – Undertale–
helped her through an unhappy phase
of her life. A 17-year-old boy from
Brazil documented both his family life
and Marcos Pontes, the only Brazilian
astronaut to fly to the Internation-
al Space Station. “I love his point of
view,” said Martin. “NASA would makeA trolley on this track takes visitors to the archive65
The Archivist of Everything