Anthony J. Pennings, PhD

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

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.

Connecting a Dangerous World: Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and National Concerns

BGP connects the world by enabling communication and cooperation among autonomous systems, ensuring that data packets can traverse the vast and interconnected network of networks that make up the Internet. It bridges separate, but networked ASes such as campuses, companies, and countries. BGP works to ensure that data packets originating from one location can cross over between ISPs and other WANS (Wide Area Networks) to reach their destination anywhere else on the planet.

ICT4D and the Global Network Transformation

I focus on the transition in network architecture and organizational models and how that led to the global Internet we have today, and specifically why it could globalize and why it became so cheap.

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.”

Why AT&T Invented and Shared the Transistor that Started the Digital Revolution

The transistor emerged from the research efforts of AT&T, the corporate behemoth that was formed by JP Morgan and guided by US policy to become the nation’s primary telecommunications provider. Fed by AT&T’s monopoly profits, Bell Labs became a virtual “patent factory”, producing thousands of technical innovations and patents a year by the 1930s. One of its major challenges was to find a more efficient successor to the vacuum tube.

Apple, Silicon Valley and the Counter-Cultural Impulse

While Woz earned his title as the “Mozart of digital design” through his design of the Apple II, Jobs helped conceive the computer as a democratizing tool with the motto-“One person–one computer.” The microcomputer was sold as a tool that would balance the unequal relationship between institutions and the individual. It would empower the individual and allow their inner artist to emerge. The Apple II Computer went on to become the darling of the counter-cultural crowd and would remain a symbol of resistance against the corporate forces of IBM and later the predatory practices of Microsoft.

how IT came to rule the world, 1.8: Bell Labs and the Transistor

Three licensees in particular, Motorola, Texas Instruments and Fairchild took advantage of AT&T’s transistor technology.

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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

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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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