From Gold to G-20: Flexible Currency Rates and Global Power
When British author Ian Fleming published the James Bond spy novel, Goldfinger in 1959, the world was locking into a new framework for managing global trade and foreign exchange transactions. The New Deal’s Bretton Woods agreements tied participating currencies into a fixed exchange rate with the US dollar that itself was tied to $35 for […]
THE EXPERIMENT, Part I: NEW ZEALAND AS THE WORLD MODEL FOR DIGITAL MONETARISM
Starting “Down Under” One of the first “guinea pigs” for the new system of digital monetarism was New Zealand. A one time a leader in the development of the “welfare state,” the small two-island nation-state in the deep Pacific Ocean had run into economic problems by the early 1980s. It had borrowed heavily during the […]
Not Like 1984: GUI and the Apple Mac
In January of 1984, during the Super Bowl, America’s most popular sporting event, Apple announced the release of the Macintosh computer. It was with a commercial that was shown only once, causing a stir, and gaining millions of dollars in free publicity afterward. The TV ad was produced by Ridley Scott whose credits at the […]
Xanadu to World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee, a British citizen and a software consultant at CERN, or Centre European pour la Recherche Nucleaire developed what came to be known as the World Wide Web (WWW). Located in Switzerland, CERN was Europe’s largest nuclear research institute, although the name was changed to European Laboratory for Particle Physics to avoid the stigma […]
Cisco Systems: From Campus to the World’s Most Valuable Company, Part One: Stanford University
Cisco Systems emerged from employees and students at Stanford University in the early 1980s to become the major supplier of the Internet’s enigmatic plumbing. In the process, it’s stock value increased dramatically and it became the largest company in the world by market capitalization. Cisco originally produced homemade multi-platform routers to connect campus computers through […]
Digital Spreadsheets – Part 5 – Ease and Epistemology
To pick up the story, I started this analysis of the spreadsheet looking at the emergence of Lotus 1-2-3 within the context of the 1980s. This included the importance of the personal computer and the Reagan Revolution – characterized the by the commercialization of Cold War technologies and the globalization and increasing financialization of individual […]
Subsidizing Silicon: NASA and the Computer
“I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be […]
The MAD Origins of the Computer Age
It was the “missile gap” that would impregnate Silicon Valley with the purpose and capital to grow to its famed stature as the center of computer innovation in the world. During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, when Robert S. McNamara was Secretary of Defense, the US undertook an enormous military buildup, with the intercontinental missile […]
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About Me
Professor and Associate Chair at State University of New York (SUNY) Korea. Recently taught at Hannam University in Daejeon, South Korea. Moved to Austin, Texas in August 2012 to join the Digital Media Management program at St. Edwards University. Spent the previous decade on the faculty at New York University teaching and researching information systems, media economics, and strategic communications.
You can reach me at:
anthony.pennings@gmail.com
anthony.pennings@sunykorea.ac.kr
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