Anthony J. Pennings, PhD

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

Tokenization of Gold in Blockchained Spreadsheet Capitalism

In spreadsheet capitalism, tokenized gold becomes a substituted signifier for the financialized metal. Vaulted bullion becomes a tradable token represented in a spreadsheet cell. Gold becomes a computable variable (risk metrics, yield structures, algorithmic trading inputs) and a synchronized signal in the global financial grid. Real-time ledger entries are harmonized with financial terminals and portfolio dashboards.

Situating Gold in the Substitution-Computational-Telecom Stack of Global Finance

This post explains that in the modern financial system, gold no longer functions as a currency but as a powerful symbolic asset within the dollar-anchored framework of “spreadsheet capitalism.” Its physical form is replaced by the digital symbol XAUUSD, which represents abstract concepts like “safe-haven,” “inflation hedge,” and “geopolitical insurance.” This symbol is integrated into the global economy through a Semiotic-Computational-Telecom (SCT) stack.

Spreadsheet Formulas and the Temporal Imperatives of the Leveraged Buyout Economy

The IBM PC and its compatibles (Compaq, Dell, DEC Rainbow 100), powered by Intel’s microprocessors, provided the hardware platform for the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet to thrive in the 1980s. The spreadsheet’s features, combined with Intel’s 8088’s processing power, made it a versatile tool for financial professionals. This post analyzes the digital spreadsheet’s capability to use […]

The Digital Spreadsheet: Interface to Space-Time, and Beyond?

The digital spreadsheet, a visual interface, uses language and numerical information organized for intelligibility and uses media and mathematical formulas to initiate horizontal and vertical causation. The spreadsheet interfaces the conscious agent with space-time and the quantum realm to operate in the space-time reality and to “summon” new realities through the acts of writing and measurement.

Digital Spreadsheets as Remediated Technologies

The digital spreadsheet was designed as an electronic document in which data was arranged in the rows and columns of a matrix and could be manipulated and used in calculations. It combined listing, tabling, and other formulaic calculations to create a new imaginative technology that transformed modern finance and the management of organizations – large, and especially the small.

Digital Spreadsheets – Part 5 – Ease and Epistemology

In this post, I discuss how spreadsheets in conjunction with other forms of financial and managerial representation not only produce the ongoing flows of knowledge that run the modern economy but have created a technologically-enhanced epistemology for garnering resources, registering value, and allocating wealth.

Steven Levy’s “A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge”

I have been developing a number of posts on the digital spreadsheet as a meaning-making technology. They have had a major impact on organizations and forming what I call spreadsheet capitalism; the particular way organizations have been enabled by this technology since the late 1970s. Spreadsheets have become central to the information practices, including accounting and financial, that have facilitated the acceleration, coordination, and globalization of the modern political economy.

Lotus Spreadsheets – Part 3 – Identifying the Components of a Transformative Tool

I begin a formal analysis of the spreadsheet by identifying some of its component parts, a type of Cartesian reductionism, but with the intent of showing also how they all work together to create a powerful organizational and productivity tool. Spreadsheets combine a number of technologically enhanced cognition features to create, manipulate and visualize diagrammatic rationalities. In other words, spreadsheets not only appraise aspects of reality, but are constitutive technologies that can shape perceptions and empower control over the lived experiences of people and the resources that support them.

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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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    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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