Anthony J. Pennings, PhD

WRITINGS ON DIGITAL ECONOMICS, ENERGY STRATEGIES, AND GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS

Four Futures and the S-Curve

Dator’s Four Futures is a framework developed by futurist and educator Jim Dator. It presents four broad scenarios or perspectives on the future that can help individuals and organizations think about and plan for different possible outcomes. These scenarios provide a structured way to consider alternative futures and potential developments. The four generic alternative scenarios are: four generic alternative futures” (continuation, collapse, discipline, transformation). This post discusses the use of S-Curves with Dator’s scenarios.

The Expanse: Cyberpunk in Space

The 4 Cs of Cyberpunk is a framework to conduct a genre inquiry and build knowledge by addressing the categories and letting them discipline the investigation. I’ve been using it more to develop a socio-technical analysis develop a socio-technical analysis of various tech products in areas such as AI, energy, biochemistry, nanotechnology, robotics, and even space travel. Still, in this case, I’m using it for traditional genre analysis to get a sense of where science fiction is guiding our imagination. What is it saying about who we are and where we are heading as a civilization?

Building Dystopian Economies in Facebook’s Metaverse

Strangely relevant to the new emergence of virtual environments like Facebook’s Metaverse, the talk was held in downtown New York City at the Woolworth Building, known as the “Cathedral of Commerce” when it was built in 1913. The location was strangely appropriate given the topic, a wrap-up of a year-long project at New York University on Second Life. The project involved an animation class taught by Mechthild Schmidt-Feist, and my class, the Political Economy of Digital Media. I still have the tee-shirt my students gave me that says “Got Linden?” a reference to Second Life’s currency, the Linden.

Four Futures: One Humanity

This post looks at a few of my favorite futurists and a book I recently found intriguing that presented four visions of the future.

The Cyberpunk Genre as Social and Technological Analysis

While the 4 C’s are useful for genre analysis, they can also be helpful categories for socio-technical analysis. The typologies provide classification systems according to structural features that assist distinctions and interpretations. These have been used to examine the iconography of cyberpunk media, such as character types in graphic novels or set designs in films, to determine its adherance to the genre. But they can also help analyze the socio-technical aspects of manufactured products and processes. These include digitally-based services such as search engines or AI. The 4Cs provide convenient analytical categories for examining modern societies by providing conceptual tools on Computers/Cyberspace, Corporations, Criminality, and Corporeality.

Xbox One – Extending Virtual Reality and Multi-Player Games

Today we got the first look at the new Xbox game console, the Xbox One S. It’s been three years since the original Xbox One was introduced in a broadcast live on Spike TV from the Microsoft campus in Bellevue, Washington when representatives from Microsoft’s Xbox team and strategic partners such as Activision and EA […]

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 […]

Max Headroom’s Futuristic News Gathering

Max Headroom extrapolated some interesting trends in television journalism. Edison was what soon became called a “platypus” reporter, multitasking with a multiple forms of equipment, particularly a rather large camcorder. By the 1980s, TV journalism had switched from using film to electromagnetic video cameras. Film was difficult to transport and had to be developed before editing. Originally developed in the 1950s for television studios, portable video cameras with sufficient quality for electronic news gathering like the Betacam were available by the time Max Headroom was conceived.

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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.