That Remote Look: History of Sensing Satellites
Both the Landsat satellites and the GOES satellites provide a constant stream of data and imagery to help understand weather events and earth resources. Both are vital to observing current meteorological and land-based events that warrant monitoring, study, and reporting.
Space Shuttles, Satellites, and Competition in Launch Vehicles
The NASA space shuttle program provided a valuable new launch vehicle for satellites. This post recounts the beginning of the US space shuttle development and its impact on satellite launches. The notion of a reusable spacecraft had been a dream since the days of Flash Gordon in the 1930s, but a number of technical problems […]
GOES-16 Satellite and its Orbital Gaze
“With this kind of resolution, if you were in New York City and you were taking a picture of Wrigley Field in Chicago, you’d be able to see home plate.” So says Eric Webster, vice president and general manager of environmental solutions and space and intelligence systems for the Harris Corp. of Fort Wayne, Indiana […]
Subsidizing Silicon: NASA and the Computer
This post investigates the Cold War’s “Space Race” that established the microprocessor industry’s foundation by subsidizing the production and quality control of the computer “chip.”
The MAD Origins of the Computer Age
The policy of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) and specifically the advancements in the Minute Man II missile led to the development and refinement of silicon integrated circuits and ultimately the microprocessor “chip.”
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 […]
JFK’s Contribution to Global Communications
On November 22, 1963, shortly after noon, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through downtown Dallas. Although he was only president for three years, he had an extraordinary influence on the development of our modern technological age, especially the rise (literally) of global communications and the fulfillment of Clarke’s vision.
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.
You can reach me at:
apennings70@gmail.com
anthony.pennings@sunykorea.ac.kr
About me
Writings by Category
- artificial intelligence
- automatrix
- books and films
- characteristics of digital media
- creative cities
- creative industries
- crisis communications
- cultural Industries
- data analytics and meaning
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- digital coordination
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- digital geography
- digital media economics
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- digital monetarism
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- disruption
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- electric money
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- futurists
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- how IT came to rule the world
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- political economies in sf
- political economy of media
- science and technology studies
- sensing technologies
- smart new deal
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- technologies of meaning
- technology management
- telecom policy and net neutrality
- telegraphic political economy
- telelearn/telework
- the cold war
- the smith effect
- uncategorized
- visual literacy and rhetoric