It is the best of times.
http://vantagon.com/2012/04/it-is-the-best-of-times/
It is the best of times. The sociopolitical upheaval caused globally by the unraveling of the world’s most threatening economic crisis has given us a new context by which to measure what stands and what doesn’t.

It is the best of times. Mainly because in our desperation to find quick fixes to our most pressing concerns, we do not succumb to mediocrity, but rather look for truly disruptive means to amplify our reach and expand our productive capacity as a species. It; is; the; best; of; times.

When most people would say all we do is destroy perfectly working institutions and bankrupt perfectly working business models, I would argue that all we do is get rid of what appeared to be working, but it was actually existing under the radar of a global society that was disconnected from everything.

As we began leveraging information networks worldwide, and technology enabled us to become inter-connected sources of information, the outreach and our own capacity to distribute, process and execute information has substantially increased like never before.

Now, what this precisely does for us, is to build a contextual capacity by which we can measure what stands as worthy and what does not; what will we tolerate and what we simply won’t- a method of discerning what simply won’t cut it. Imagine it as if we’ve had this sea of inefficiencies and lack of productivity, but we couldn’t see it. Data yields conclusions, and during the industrial age, we did not have access to data.

Now that we do have access to data, we are beginning to inter-connect it and yield conclusions. The World Bank releases data and maintains an API to let developers access their datasets and build applications. Conclusions. In the information age, we obtain them by converting implicit knowledge into an explicit, actionable form- mobile & social applications being the full embodiment of this.

FACT: The economic breakdown of 2008 has produced such a increase in the global debt level that it will take 10 to 15 years to reduce it back to where it was before the crisis.

Then, what if we eliminate or change all the institutions that are stuck in the industrial age? all these wasteful and outdated entities that got us here -yes, forget the classical tale of greed; although part of the problem, greed is not the main cause, but rather a symptom enforced by institutions with no accountability or sustainability. We must classify all these institutions, notions, regulations, industries and their corresponding processes as bullshit and start anew.

Generation Y was brought up with web-enabled tools that made transparency and efficiency a key part of every piece of action embedded to their fingertips. Now it is time to apply that concept to industries where we never could have imagined it working: Banking, Congress, fundraising, Government spending, taxes, inter-company intelligence.

All it takes is vision; for someone, somewhere to dream up a system, a model, a method to change what is already established. That which we usually take for granted, which we ignore it’s broken, which we think we cannot change.

But we are driven, as a group of passionate professionals, to find these other people who dream with reinventing the established notions that rule and define society. We are driven to work with them in enabling a better tomorrow, based in innovation, sustainability and the transmigration of values from technology into every sphere of society.

Because the tools we use define what kind of people we are. It’s no surprise nowadays that a government that prohibits the use of Twitter is not recognizing their citizen’s rights to free speech and access to information.

That’s an assertion we can all agree upon now, but for this contemporary association to occur, we first had to dream up of a system that would let people share their knowledge with no restrictions, other than in batches of 140 characters.

The next big thing could come from anywhere, anyone. This is why it is the best of times. It is time to reinvent. It is time to chase your passion and have a shot at a bold mission for yourselves. We are Vantagon, and we exist to empower your vision.

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