Anthony J. Pennings, PhD

WRITINGS ON DIGITAL ECONOMICS, ENERGY STRATEGIES, AND GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS

How IT Came to Rule the World, 1.5: ARPA and NASA

After the USSR shocked the world in 1956 with its Sputnik satellite, the US took two major actions that would converge later in the modern Internet as well as a wide range of other technologies, including the microprocessor and the personal computer.

How IT Came to Rule the World, 1.4: SAGE and Early Electronic Computing

The SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) system conceived at MIT and built at IBM’s Poughkeepsie, New York facilities helped transform the computer from a bulky, slow, vacuum-tube switched numerical processor into a generalized, software-driven, transistor-enabled, media-enhanced computer with an accompanying communications system able to send digital data over telephone lines.

HOW IT CAME TO RULE THE WORLD, 1.3

Containment would transform the telegraphic political economy, based on the telex and telephone into a computer-mediated world environment that linked banks and foreign exchange markets, connected global markets and production facilities, and integrated radar into the first computerized command and control system that would later become NORAD

HOW IT CAME TO RULE THE WORLD, 1.2

The New Deal had restructured the US policy environment and with the industrial stimulus of World War II, saved liberal capitalism in the United States. IBM for example had been clutched from the jaws of the Great Depression by the Social Security Act, which provided a major market for its new keypunch calculating machines.

HOW IT CAME TO RULE THE WORLD, 1.0 and 1.1

To these ends a massive mobilization of capital and technological means was initiated. Over the next few decades, tensions increased and investments in military electronics and space-based technologies led to the first electronic computers and major advances in telecommunications, including satellites for remote sensing and communications.

HOW IT CAME TO RULE THE WORLD, 0.5

Technologies are part of a set of practices that frame information and meaning. The spreadsheet, for example, combines the power of lists and tables with other calculative abilities that “in-form” meaning and organize sets of knowledge that run organizations and structure lives.

HOW IT CAME TO RULE THE WORLD, 0.4

Over time, these regimes shaped an informational and technological environment that was sequentially dedicated to: 1) a military real-time hemispheric radar defense system to protect against a nuclear attack; 2) an international regime of capital decontrols, electronic money and financial news flows, and 3) an electronic environment for social networking, surveillance, and global business to business (B2B), business to government (B2G), business to consumer (B2C), and consumer to consumer (C2C) transactions.

HOW IT CAME TO RULE THE WORLD, 0.3

Consequently, these technologies are also involved in shaping modern American society, establishing new rules and protocols for daily life, and in the application and practice of power at the political level.

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  • About Me

    Professor at State University of New York (SUNY) Korea since 2016. 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, digital economics, and strategic communications.

    You can reach me at:

    apennings70@gmail.com
    anthony.pennings@sunykorea.ac.kr

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    The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of my employers, past or present.