When the Fed Speaks, Global Spreadsheets Reformulate the Future
The modern world economy operates as a synchronized symbolic computation system. A rate cut, therefore, triggers not a single reaction but billions of linked recalculations occurring simultaneously across financial terminals such as the Bloomberg Terminal, BlackRock’s Aladdin, LSEG’s Workspace, and the Wind Information Terminal. The moment the announcement appears, spreadsheet logic activates globally.
When Treasuries Went Digital and Built the Global USD System
The transformation of US Treasuries from paper to electronic form enabled scaling global liquidity, coordinating financial markets, and sustaining the vast network of dollar-based transactions that define today’s world economy.
USD Liquidity: A Tiered Hierarchy Model and Implications for AI4Good and ICT4D
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, Apr 12) USD Liquidity: A Tiered Hierarchy Model and Implications for AI4Good and ICT4D. apennings.com https://apennings.com/characteristics-of-digital-media/usd-liquidity-a-tiered-liquidity-hierarchy-model-and-implications-for-ai4good-and-ict4d/ Introduction The “USD” is not simply a national currency. It is a global liquidity system composed of both domestically issued US dollars and offshore Eurodollar credit created by international banks. Together, these […]
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 Global “Balance Sheet” in Spreadsheet Capitalism
Spreadsheet capitalism builds a global balance sheet by transforming the world into a synchronized, computable set of claims. Through substitution, abstraction, symbolic computing, and telecommunications grids, it creates a system in which liquidity governs outcomes and balance sheets define possibility.
LSEG Workspace as the Central Spreadsheet Grid for Eurodollars
LSEG Workspace is a giant live spreadsheet that organizes the eurodollar system into cells and formulas. Treasuries and Fed rates are the anchor cells. Repo, FX swaps, and offshore deposits are formula-driven references.
Markets and Prices: Pros, Cons
This post looks a how the notion of markets emerged and what is useful and determental about them. It discusses the underlying economic understanding of markets and includes several critiques of this term and our allegiance to them.
The Lasting Impact of ALOHAnet and Norman Abramson
The success and influence of ALOHAnet proved that multiple devices could share the same communication medium effectively, ultimately helping shape the modern landscape of wired and wireless networking.
keep looking »Categories
Referencing this Material
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
About me
Writings by Category
- artificial intelligence
- automatrix
- blockchain
- books and films
- characteristics of digital media
- creative cities
- creative industries
- crisis communications
- cryptocurrencies
- cultural Industries
- data analytics and meaning
- democratic political economies
- digital coordination
- digital destruction
- digital geography
- digital media economics
- digital media management
- digital monetarism
- digital spreadsheets
- disaster risk management
- disruption
- dystopian economies
- educational innovations
- electric money
- enabling frameworks
- enterprise systems
- financial news
- financial technology
- food policy and security
- futurists
- geopolitical risk
- global communications
- global e-commerce
- health IT
- how IT came to rule the world
- intellectual property
- journalism
- meaning makers
- meaningful play
- media strategies
- mobile technologies
- multimedia
- political economies in sf
- political economy of media
- public administration
- science and technology studies
- sensing technologies
- smart new deal
- social media
- space systems
- spreadsheet logic
- strategic communications
- sustainable development
- technologies of meaning
- technology management
- telecom policy and net neutrality
- telegraphic political economy
- telelearn/telework
- the cold war
- the smith effect
- uncategorized
- visual literacy and rhetoric
