A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMPUTER MEMORY
Today’s story begins in a crowded marketplace in New Delhi in the mid’60s. Martha Ramsay had just bought three round, handcrafted brass trays and a basket of peaches.
“I was walking through the market carrying these heavy trays along with the fruit, when I heard a hiss in my ear,” she wrote in an online post. “I turned and saw a king cobra sitting on a man’s shoulder right next to me.”
She threw the peaches and trays into the air and ran for her life. “The man ran, too! It was chaos,” recalls Ramsay, who permitted me to share her story. When the scene calmed, she went back to retrieve her trays and fruit.
Nearly 60 years later, the brass trays hang in her home, a reminder of that harrowing encounter. To her three adult sons, however, the trays meant nothing. They might as well have been trinkets picked up at Pier One Imports — until Ramsay posted a photo and the tale on Artifcts.com, a new online platform for those who want to preserve the stories behind their stuff for future generations.
Part family museum, part storage locker, part scrapbook, Artifcts lets you preserve keepsakes in a shareable digital collection. The truly motivated can upload audio or video files, too.
Just think of all the times your parents or grandparents told you stories, and you didn’t pay attention.
“We end the mess and solve the mystery,” said Artifcts co-founder Heather Nickerson.
She and co-founder Ellen Goodwin, both former CIA agents (and you thought the story couldn’t get any better) launched the platform last August. Today, nearly 900 members have uploaded more than 3,000 items at costs ranging from free (upload five artifacts) to $89 (unlimited items for a year). That’s a lot cheaper than a storage unit.
“The trays are a perfect example of how memories linked to objects help define a life,” Nickerson said, adding that once Ramsay’s sons learned the cobra story, they each wanted a tray.
Naturally, I had a few questions for Nickerson.