How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.6: The PC and the Floppy Disk
The development of the floppy disk was a crucial factor determining the success of the personal computer.
How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.5: Intel and the PC
After twenty years of government backing, the microprocessing industry was about to crawl out on its own. And it was the microcomputer that would give the semiconductor industry the legs to become viable in the commercial arena.
How IT Came to Rule the World, 1.9: Xerox PARC
The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was sent up by Xerox in 1970 to establish leadership in the “architecture of information”, a sufficiently vague but enticing term coined by Xerox CEO Peter McColough. Drawing on Xerox’s great wealth, PARC harvested the fruits of ARPA’s continuous funding by hiring one of their former directors and by recruiting some of computer science’s top researchers. At PARC, Xerox developed the Alto and the Star, personalized computers with a GUI interface, mouse, and even Ethernet data networking. These PARC innovations inspired companies like Apple, Cisco and 3Com to develop new technologies like the Macintosh and data routers.
How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.4: Global Money and Spreadsheet Capitalism
Spreadsheet technology was foundational for digital monetarism because it provided a calculative tool that became universally available and provided immediate feedback via the accessibility of the personal computer.
How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.3: Data Packets for Dollars
Using the new X.25 series of packet-switching protocols embraced by the ITU, banks developed extensive international networks and clearinghouse systems to offer information services for the movement of credit information and money and to settle accounts. The supranational fund of electronic eurodollars that emerged out of the OPEC surpluses of the 1970s’ oil crises an provided an important step to the global Internet as the packet-switched technology was implemented in banking networks to coordinate the resultant flows of international currency exchange and debt.
How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.2: Eurodollars, Petrodollars
How did this world of global digital monetarism emerge? How did fluid capital transcend the containment policies and boundaries erected in the period up to 1970s to develop in the 1980s and beyond into a global financial environment where computerized algorithmic trading have created complex high transactional volume markets for an array of currency derivatives, stock index futures, CDOs and other computer based financial instruments?
Figuring Criminality in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street
Perhaps no other film captured the economic changes taking place in the 1980s as did Oliver Stone’s (1987) Wall Street. Much of the financial world started to change dramatically as deregulation and technical innovation created new dangers and new opportunities for both the abuse and the creation of wealth. This post looks at how that […]
How IT Came to Rule the World, 1.9: Early Internationalization of the Internet
A number of ideas were discussed concerning future uses and implementation of the ARPANET, including its integration with other networks around the world. Although the network would continue to be underused, the conference sparked a number of initiatives that would have longstanding influences on the future of the Internet.
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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
About me
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