Five Generations of Wireless Technology
The term “generations” has been applied to wireless technology classifications as a way to refer to the major disruptions and innovations in the state of mobile technology and associated services. These innovations include the move to data and the Internet protocols associated with convergence of multiple forms of communications media (cable, mobile, wireline) and the wide array of services that are becoming increasingly available on portable devices like laptops and smartphones. We are now on the cusp of the 5th generation rollout of wireless services with intriguing implications for enterprise mobility, “m-commerce,” public safety and a wide array of new entertainment and personal productivity services.
From Gold to G-20: Flexible Currency Rates and Global Power
When British author Ian Fleming published the James Bond spy novel, Goldfinger in 1959, the world was locking into a new framework for managing global trade and foreign exchange transactions. The New Deal’s Bretton Woods agreements tied participating currencies into a fixed exchange rate with the US dollar that itself was tied to $35 for […]
THE EXPERIMENT, Part I: NEW ZEALAND AS THE WORLD MODEL FOR DIGITAL MONETARISM
Starting “Down Under” One of the first “guinea pigs” for the new system of digital monetarism was New Zealand. A one time a leader in the development of the “welfare state,” the small two-island nation-state in the deep Pacific Ocean had run into economic problems by the early 1980s. It had borrowed heavily during the […]
Characteristics of Economic Goods and their Social Implications
In a previous post, I wrote about how media products can be considered “misbehaving economic goods” because most don’t conform to the standard product that is individually owned and consumed in its entirety. Economics is mainly based on the assumption that when a good or service is consumed, it is used up wholly by its […]
Russian Interference, Viral Sharing, and Friends Lying to Friends on Social Media in the 2016 Elections
As discussed previously, social media is now a central part of modern democracies and their election processes. This was touted in the Obama presidential election in 2008 but became even more evident in the 2016 U.S. election, notably for unexpected 304-232 electoral college victory by Donald Trump. The real estate magnate and reality show TV […]
CISCO SYSTEMS: FROM CAMPUS TO THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE COMPANY, PART TWO: Starting Up the Tech
Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner left Stanford University in December 1984 to launch Cisco Systems, a California-based company known for innovative networking devices. Data communications, and particularly, packet-switching, the key technology of the Internet, was in its infancy. Leading computer companies like IBM were slow to make the major innovations needed for its success. So […]
Xanadu to World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee, a British citizen and a software consultant at CERN, or Centre European pour la Recherche Nucleaire developed what came to be known as the World Wide Web (WWW). Located in Switzerland, CERN was Europe’s largest nuclear research institute, although the name was changed to European Laboratory for Particle Physics to avoid the stigma […]
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 […]
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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
Writings by Category
- automatrix
- books and films
- characteristics of digital media
- creative cities
- creative industries
- crisis communications
- cultural Industries
- data analytics and meaning
- democratic political economies
- digital coordination
- digital destruction
- digital geography
- digital media economics
- digital media management
- digital monetarism
- digital spreadsheets
- disruption
- dystopian economies
- educational innovations
- electric money
- enterprise systems
- financial news
- financial technology
- food policy and security
- geopolitical risk
- global communications
- global e-commerce
- health IT
- how IT came to rule the world
- intellectual property
- journalism
- meaning makers
- meaningful play
- media strategies
- mobile technologies
- multimedia
- political economies in sf
- political economy of media
- science and technology studies
- smart new deal
- social media
- space systems
- strategic communications
- sustainable development
- technologies of meaning
- telecom policy and net neutrality
- telegraphic political economy
- telelearn/telework
- the cold war
- the smith effect
- uncategorized
- visual literacy and rhetoric