About the Foundation
The Pentameter Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit established to protect the integrity of our written works forever.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
What
You can think of Pentameter as a security organization. Our mission is to protect the integrity of original sources of information, such as first edition books, by preserving them and safeguarding access to them forever. This is a new kind of security, different from physical, cyber, or other existing forms of security. Call it “cultural” security. It is also a new kind of system of preservation, focused not just on preserving physical books themselves, but in preserving the integrity of their content.
It bears mention that Pentameter is explicitly not political. We do not care who changes a text or for what purpose. We only serve to create a way to verify whether or not a copy is like the original.
Why
The world is undergoing a re-organization. The levers of power are being challenged, and perhaps will even be shifted. Military conflicts have erupted on nearly every continent, politicians speak with increasingly extreme rhetoric, and relationships everywhere are being tensed and tested. Yeats warned us of a time such as this, a time where “The falcon cannot hear the falconer”.
We all learned in school about the many book burnings, bannings, and expurgations of history. We also learned that those events happened in times that if you squint your eyes don’t look so different than right now.
The invaluable treasure that was the digitization of literature has made it so that we can carry an entire library in our pockets. But it has also introduced a new vector for attack. A digital copy of anything can be altered, and with the advancement of AI such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, the alteration can happen in real time and at unimaginable scale. What if you could burn a book without fire? What if you could do it with the click of a button? What if you could do it without anyone noticing?
Who
Patrick Brodie (Founder & Board Chair) - Patrick is part writer, part technologist. Patrick has spent the past 10 years building teams and software systems that operate at the threshold where computing meets real world physics. From NASA deep space mission development to cybersecurity for critical infrastructure such as power plants, oil & gas pipelines, and manufacturing facilities. It was his years in cybersecurity that led him to understand just how vulnerable our history and literature are to being changed.