A Digital Bobsled in ICT4D
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, Aug 29) A Digital Bobsled in ICT4D. apennings.com https://apennings.com/digital-geography/a-digital-bobsled-in-ict4d/ Introduction Cool Runnings (1992) (“peaceful journey”) is not simply as an underdog sports story, but as a parable about entering a technological world without having to become culturally or economically identical to the countries that built it.[1] My earlier […]
The Computerization of Society Revisited: French Social Theory and the Geopolitics of Information and Data Centers in the Age of AI
Nora and Minc concluded that the only way to prevent France from being subjugated by American computing conglomerates was for the state to build and regulate the national telecommunications infrastructure, ensuring that the informational grid remained a public utility rather than a corporate monopoly.
I Can See Clearly Now: Jimmy Cliff, Cool Runnings, and the Case for Appropriate Development
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, Aug 20) I Can See Clearly Now: Jimmy Cliff, Cool Runnings, and the Case for Appropriate Development. apennings.com https://apennings.com/political-economy-of-media/i-can-see-clearly-now-jimmy-cliff-cool-runnings-and-the-case-for-appropriate-development/ Introduction I often use a song to set a theme for my classes. For my EST 230 – Information and Communications Technology for Sustainable Development, I chose Jimmy Cliff’s […]
Remediation and Spreadsheet Logic: Meaning and Certainty Through Hypermediacy?
The most important conclusion is that the spreadsheet creates a distinctive form of authenticity.
The ICT4SD and World Order Assignment
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, May 26) The ICT4SD and World Order Assignment. apennings.com https://apennings.com/technologies-of-meaning/the-ict4sd-and-world-order-assignment/ Note: This is an introduction to a collection of student articles for a downloadable pdf book called ICT4D and Future Global Sustainability. Introduction A foundational course like EST 230 – Information and Communication Technologies for Sustainable Development (ICT4SD), […]
Epistemological and Philosophical Implications of Spreadsheet Logic
Spreadsheet logic is more than a tool; it is a distinctive epistemological and philosophical regime. By filtering corporate strategy, investment allocation, public policy, and even personal career planning through rows and columns of assumptions, cash-flow forecasts, discount rates, net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and sensitivity tables, it imposes a specific way of knowing and valuing the world.
The Ghost in the Grid: Interpretants and Calculable Traces in Spreadsheet Capitalism
The spreadsheet, as a computational medium, transforms heterogeneous material realities into standardized symbolic inscriptions. To understand this transformation, semiotic theory offers two powerful but distinct conceptual tools: Charles Sanders Peirce’s notion of the interpretant and Jacques Derrida’s concept of the trace. While Peirce emphasizes the generative continuity of meaning through interpretive mediation, Derrida foregrounds the structural absence and deferral that inhabit all signification. Taken together, these frameworks illuminate how the numbers and letters populating financial spreadsheets function as representations of the messy, contingent world.
The AI Prompter as Auteur? Examining LLM Authorship Through the Lens of Film Theory
I’ve been teaching film classes on and off since graduate school. It has never been my primary focus, but the historical and theoretical depth of film studies intrigued me as well as the technologies and techniques that shape thinking and understanding. I incorporate much of it in my EST 240 – Visual Rhetoric and Information […]
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About Me
Professor (full) at State University of New York (SUNY) Korea since 2016. Research Professor for Stony Brook University. 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 global political economy
You can reach me at:
anthony.pennings@gmail.com
apennings70@gmail.com
anthony.pennings@sunykorea.ac.kr
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