Anthony J. Pennings, PhD

WRITINGS ON DIGITAL ECONOMICS, ENERGY STRATEGIES, AND GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS

Revisiting Huxley and Orwell on Technology and Democracy

One of the faces I miss most from my days on the NYU campus is that of Neil Postman, a professor of media ecology at the Steinhardt school. Professor Postman died a few years ago but not without leaving behind a legacy, including one of my favorite books, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in […]

Origins of the “Information Economy”

The economic understanding of knowledge’s contribution to the economy accelerated in the 1970s and terms such as “information society” and the “information economy” began to achieve high rates of circulation by the next decade. When I was at the East-West Center in Honolulu as a graduate student during the 1980s, I was part of a […]

Bitcoins and the Properties of Money

“Money is a matter of functions four, a medium, a measure, a standard, a store.” – Lyrical couplet used to memorize the roles of money. Bitcoin emerged during the Great Recession to challenge the notion of official money and particularly its political and symbolic connection to a national system. While the US and much of […]

The Fedwire Network and Open Market Operations of the Federal Reserve

I’ve been studying financial technology since I did my masters degree on global money and telecommunications networks. One of the most intriguing examples is the US Federal Reserve’s Fedwire network. Probably the most secure data network in the world, it has been designed to provide a wide range of services for financial institutions such as […]

Electric Money Never Sleeps

Money used to sleep a lot. It would nap while waiting for a telex message to go out. It would doze off while waiting for a telephone connection. It would slumber on railroad routes. It would hibernate on transoceanic crossings. By the mid-20th century, money developed insomnia. Computers and telecommunications were being used together to […]

Smith Effect III: Adam Smith, the Census Machine, and the Beginnings of IBM

This post further develops the thesis that Adam Smith’s new conception of the wealth set the foundation for modern information practices and calculating technologies.

From Sputnik Moment to the Reagan Revolution

President Obama has mentioned the Sputnik satellite several times in speeches over the last few years to refer to the contemporary challenges facing the US such as climate change, oil depletion and the decline of the American economy. Most recently in the 2011 State of the Union address, he spoke of the Soviet Union’s space […]

Neuromancing the Code: When IT Changed

This post discusses how the cyberpunk genre began to contribute new forms of understanding to the “codes” that had linguistically determined “IT.”

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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.

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    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.