Anthony J. Pennings, PhD

WRITINGS ON AI POLICY, DIGITAL ECONOMICS, ENERGY STRATEGIES, AND GLOBAL E-COMMERCE

Stablecoins, SACT-AI, and the Future of Global Liquidity for Sustainable Development

Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, Apr 28) Stablecoins, SACT-AI, and the Future of Global Liquidity for Sustainable Development. apennings.com https://apennings.com/political-economy-of-media/stablecoins-sact-ai-and-the-future-of-global-liquidity-for-sustainable-development/ Introduction The impending implementation of Treasury-backed stablecoins suggests a the onset of a profound shift in the architecture of global finance. What appears, at first glance, to be a technical innovation in digital […]

The Ghost in the Grid: Interpretants and Calculable Traces in Spreadsheet Capitalism

The spreadsheet, as a computational medium, transforms heterogeneous material realities into standardized symbolic inscriptions. To understand this transformation, semiotic theory offers two powerful but distinct conceptual tools: Charles Sanders Peirce’s notion of the interpretant and Jacques Derrida’s concept of the trace. While Peirce emphasizes the generative continuity of meaning through interpretive mediation, Derrida foregrounds the structural absence and deferral that inhabit all signification. Taken together, these frameworks illuminate how the numbers and letters populating financial spreadsheets function as representations of the messy, contingent world.

The Global “Balance Sheet” in Spreadsheet Capitalism

Spreadsheet capitalism builds a global balance sheet by transforming the world into a synchronized, computable set of claims. Through substitution, abstraction, symbolic computing, and telecommunications grids, it creates a system in which liquidity governs outcomes and balance sheets define possibility.

The SACT Attack: How Spreadsheet Capitalism Conquered the World

Once Substitution is complete, the other layers of SACT can take over. You cannot apply Abstraction (comparing unlike things), Symbolic Computing (formulas), or Telecommunications (speed) to a physical house. But you can apply all of them to the token of the house sitting in a spreadsheet cell.

Telecom Synchronization in Spreadsheet Capitalism

Telecom provides the connectivity through which the abstractions of finance become actionable and enforceable. Spreadsheet capitalism’s synchronization logic operates through its three stratified but interdependent layers: physical, network, and value-added, which provide the architecture of global monetary coordination.

LSEG Workspace as the Central Spreadsheet Grid for Eurodollars

LSEG Workspace is a giant live spreadsheet that organizes the eurodollar system into cells and formulas. Treasuries and Fed rates are the anchor cells. Repo, FX swaps, and offshore deposits are formula-driven references.

Lasswell and Hall – Power and Meaning in Media

Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2019, Mar 6). Lasswell and Hall – Power and Meaning in Media. apennings.com https://apennings.com/media-strategies/lasswell-and-hall-power-and-meaning-in-media/ Harold Dwight Lasswell was one of the founding influences on the formation of the study of communication, media studies, and sociology. Stuart Hall was a Rhodes Scholar from Jamaica who helped pioneer an area of […]

Hootsuite and the Social Media Curriculum

I’ve been training people in Hootsuite for the last three years. The desktop and mobile dashboard system was designed to integrate and manage social media applications like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. Some others you might recognize are Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress, TrendSpottr, and Mixi. While it has some competition, it is still the best social […]

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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

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    The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of my employers, past or present. Articles are not meant as financial advice.

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