The Virtual Knowledge Group (VKG) is a concept as much as a
company. Nancy, the founder and director, jokes that in the small
mid-western town closest to the farm where she grew up she was
described through statements such as, "Oh, her? She's always been
different."
Different times require different thoughts and actions. Friends,
as I am sure you know, we are headed into very different times. Many
say we are headed toward very difficult times as we face: global
warming. fundamentalist frictions, a world wide health crisis, over
exploitation of dwindling resources, economic clashes between the very
few rich and the massive numbers of the poor.
Gregory Bateson a visionary thinker of the 20th Century defined information as "any difference that makes a difference."
We are awash in difference. How we handle the information embedded
in those differences will determine whether these coming constraints
limit or enable.
We are at a point of punctuation in the process understood as
evolution. All this means is that we are at a time of rapid change
and can expect rapid expression of emergent properties activated by
novel contextual triggers. The concept is understood as punctuated
equilibrium. The gist of the theory was that "significant evolutionary
change arises in coincidence with events of branching speciation, and not
primarily through the transformation of lineages."