Digital Spreadsheets – Techno-Epistemological Power over People and Resources
Understanding spreadsheets helps us see how they work in organizations and how they are implicated in the reproduction of information practices and institutional memories over time. I previously described the different media components of the spreadsheet that come together to create the gridmatic framework that registers, classifies, and identifies new conceptual understandings of organizational dynamics. These institutions or collectivities can be a neighborhood coffee shop or a global corporation; they can be a local Girl Scout Chapter or an international NGO.
We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us
One of Marshall McLuhan’s most celebrated intellectual “probes” was a paraphrase of Winston Churchill’s infamous “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Churchill was addressing Parliament some two years after a devastating air raid by the Nazis destroyed the House of Commons and was arguing for its restoration, despite the major challenges […]
YouTube: Alice’s Rabbithole or Hypertext to Hell?
Edited remarks from the conference on YouTube: Ten Years After November 20, 2015 Hannam University Linton School of Global Business I’m happy to be a part of this commemoration of YouTube’s tenth year anniversary and thank Dr. Youngshin Cho for being our keynote speaker and enlightening us with his very informative talk.[1] Hopefully, you are […]
Expressive Values and the Creative Products of the Korean Wave
Invited Respondent Remarks at The Korean Wave: Branding Korea in the 21st Century November 25th, 2014 Hannam University Daejeon, Republic of Korea Hosted by the Linton Global College First, I want to thank Dr. Doobo Shim for his excellent keynote speech and Dr. Jean-Luc Renaud for moderating this event.[1] What I want to talk about […]
Lotus Spreadsheets – Part 3 – Identifying the Components of a Transformative Tool
I begin a formal analysis of the spreadsheet by identifying some of its component parts, a type of Cartesian reductionism, but with the intent of showing also how they all work together to create a powerful organizational and productivity tool. Spreadsheets combine a number of technologically enhanced cognition features to create, manipulate and visualize diagrammatic rationalities. In other words, spreadsheets not only appraise aspects of reality, but are constitutive technologies that can shape perceptions and empower control over the lived experiences of people and the resources that support them.
Lotus Spreadsheets – The Killer App of the Reagan Revolution – Part 2 – Spreadsheet Capitalism Emerges
In this post I examine the transformation of the 1980s corporate landscape facilitated by PC-based spreadsheet-modeled merger and acquisition (M&A) activities.
Drone Journalism and Remote Sensing
After 9/11, I developed and often taught a course at New York University called Remote Sensing and Surveillance. It was designed to study the promises and perils of technologies such as aerial photography, closed circuit cameras, multiple orbit-earth satellites, and a number of IP-based web surveillance systems. The course combined a social science approach with […]
The Surveilling Eye of Global Financial News
Surveillance of the world is considered an important function of media systems and plays a unique role in the financial industry. Furthermore, it is important to place the analysis of financial news within the political context of a larger techno-structural environment of global financial trading that works to discipline countries, companies and people around the world. The implications of this global web have been amplified by the extraordinary volume and velocity of the system that sees tens of trillions of dollars of trades transacted every day.
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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
About me
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