US Stablecoins Blockchain Networks: Techno-Fiefs or Hyper-Capitalist Rails?
Rather than mutually exclusive realities, these two frameworks describe the twin forces pulling at the contemporary computational economy. When digital platforms use proprietary algorithms to trap users, wall off infosystems, and extract rent from uncompensated data flows, they demonstrate the coercive power of the Techno-Feudal estate. Yet, when developers deploy open-source HTTP primitives like x402 and self-custodial digital dollar rails to dismantle the tollgates of correspondent banking, they unleash a Hyper-Capitalist dynamic that levels transaction costs and extends market access to previously excluded frontiers.
ICT4D and the Geography of AI Computation
The geography of computation is ultimately a geography of opportunity. The central development challenge is no longer simply getting people online. It is ensuring that they can capture data, represent their own realities, retrieve knowledge, access computation, connect tools, coordinate intelligent systems, and convert computational capacity into meaningful action.
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.
The USD System at the Center of China’s Global Engine
The strategic question today is what China would lose if global dollar liquidity became substantially less available. China could continue trading through the renminbi, CIPS, bilateral currency arrangements, and other alternatives, but replacing the dollar requires replacing an enormous coordination infrastructure, not merely introducing another currency.
The $100 Trillion Debt Era: MMT as Permission, SACT as Engine
Spreadsheet logic and the SACT stack provide the operational engine. By substituting physical matter into digital signifiers, abstracting heterogenous noise into clean taxonomies, computing complex supply-chain logic, and synchronizing market states across global networks, SACT converts the chaotic, messy physical universe into a organized matrix of purchasable products. Without the SACT translation layer, MMT’s sovereign dollars float as useless signifiers; with it, sovereign money becomes an operative tool capable of re-engineering the physical world.
The $100 Trillion Question: Treasury-Backed Digital Dollars and a Democratic Political Economy
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, Jul 27) The $100 Trillion Question: Treasury-Backed Digital Dollars and a Democratic Political Economy. apennings.com https://apennings.com/global-e-commerce/the-100-trillion-question-treasury-backed-digital-dollars-and-a-democratic-political-economy/ Introduction As the United States national debt accelerates past historical milestones, traditional economic orthodoxy, “goldbugs,” and manipulative politicians continue to issue dire warnings of imminent fiscal insolvency, surging bond yields, and currency […]
Literature Review on Global US Dollar Shortages and the Performativity of the USD Standard
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, July 02) Literature Review on Global US Dollar Shortages and the Performativity of the USD Standard. apennings.com https://apennings.com/global-e-commerce/literature-review-on-global-usd-shortages-and-the-performativity-of-the-usd-standard/ The limit of a society’s wealth is ultimately determined by the structural limits of its accounting grammar. – ChatGPT [1] Introduction The argument that the global economy suffers from a […]
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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
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anthony.pennings@gmail.com
apennings70@gmail.com
anthony.pennings@sunykorea.ac.kr
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