Statement of Purpose |
A Palantir is a mythical object from the fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings -- a Seeing Stone, a round, smooth black orb that allows its user, if he has sufficient strength of will, to see and hear happenings in far off lands, to communicate with any other Palantir (there were only 7 in Middle Earth), and even to shape and control the images viewed by others.
This magical, fanciful concept is closer to realization today than Prof. Tolkien could have ever imagined when he dreamed up the Palantire in the 1940s -- before television, before Satellites, before the Internet and cellular phones and GMPCS. Only in our emerging world, the vision is not of seven hidden Palantiri fot the elite rulers of the world, but of unlimited access by virtually all peoples to voice, data, image, and video communication.
The goal of the Palantir Project is to help bring this vision closer to reality, to play an active part in connecting the world through all means of communication, among all communities. We seek to achieve this by communication ourselves: by sharing information, ideas, and experience of those involved the communications field, in establishing the policies and rules that can push forward the spread of these magical technologies to all corners of our Earth. Our goal is to serve as a central focus of some of the debates and investigations shaping the development of global communications policy, to be a Seeing Stone that looks out on activities around the world, and into which the leaders of the communications revolution can gaze, to learn how goes the campaign on other shores.
©1997 David N. Townsend & Associates