<nettime> Re: some observations on the bias of financial networks

[Felix Stalder <stalder@fis.utoronto.ca>]

Scot,

thanks a lot for your observations. They are most certainly more nuanced
than mine. The basic point I wanted to make, and especially your reference
to the "pre-electronic" network of the Chicago Board of Trade makes it much
stronger than I could make it, is the following:

Financial markets, more than anything else so far, have made use of the new
electronic networks because their internal logic was a network one right
from the beginning. Before, say, the early seventies the markets have been
slowed down by communication media which did not fully support their
internal logic and were limited to what could be done either via
telegraphs, phones or in the pit.  This communicative environment created
some structural barriers to the growth of these markets: you can hold only
so many telephones at a time. In the new environment (computer networks)
these barriers have been removed and the markets grew beyond the wildest
imagination.  In the seventies and eighties the financial markets have been
"liberated" technically and politically (which came first is not  so
important) and in the nineties we all feel the impact of this liberation
very strongly in our every day lifes, from the EURO to the demise of unions
and CNNfn.

Because the financial markets have had, long before the computer networks,
a network structure, the patterns they established in now are indicative
for the environment in general. Understanding the financial markets, then,
can help to understand basic organizational patterns of our society in
general. As much as the factory can be said to have provided a basic
organizational blue print for 19th century western societies at large.


Felix






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