Technology is rarely talked about as the underlying driver of socio-economic progress ... but it can be argued that this is, in fact, the single most important factor ... that it is technology that is giving us opportunities that have never before been possible, and it is technology that provides the constraints to what progress is possible.

In ancient times, the great civilizations were all associated with some development of understanding of technology ... the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings. In more recent times the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and now the knowledge revolution.

Modern engineering thermodynamics provides a good framework for thinking about social performance. There are engineering balances that are fundamental ... work and energy .. efficiency. These ideas translate very well into the performance of society. TVM is grounded in some very old basic concepts of thermodynamics and accountancy and measurement.

TVM also embraces 21st century technical possibilities. In simple ... perhaps simplistic ... terms, TVM is like Facebook except that the central focus is a physical community rather than “me”. With TVM, the connections are not “my” friends and interests, but the people, organizations and issues that influence or impact the socio-economic performance of the community.

TVM is structured so that the data about a community is organized in useful ways, rather like the way corporate accounting information is organized into accounts and different datasets that make it easy to understand corporate performance.

TVM uses some of constructs that make corporate accountancy powerful ... but does not limit itself to just money transactions, but also embraces activities and initiatives that affect socio-economic well-being.