What if the Screens Went Black? The Coming of Software Agents
Trading screens are not supposed to be black. In fact, when we see them on trading floors, on TV, or in media centres, they attract us with catching colours and blinking information. They project urgency, speed, and power – the power of big money, the pow
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Trading screens are not supposed to be black. In fact, when we see them on trading floors, on TV, or in media centres, they attract us with catching colours and blinking information. They project urgency, speed, and power – the power of big money, the power of winning and losing. When we are near them, we feel their heat. We want to give in to their considerable attraction. We want to be players of the game and part of the action. Of course, the screens are only a medium. What beckons us is the market. All the beguiling signals come from a market that moves – prices, volumes, ratios, differentials. They move in a context and in response to it. The context, of course, also moves, but usually more slowly. How often do politicians make decisions? How often do tsunamis strike? The context is everything that happens in the world that may have an impact on the market. But that everything happens on a human schedule and is adapted to how we conduct our lives and how nature and the environment conduct theirs. What parts of the context impact a market? The question is ongoing and difficult. Should the stars and their movements have a presence onscreen? Astrologists may think so, but Reuters and Bloomberg don’t, and they are two of the largest companies feeding material to the screens. Is Namibia a country that should be present in a global financial market? It has its weekend and peasant markets, to be sure, and some stocks, but its gross domestic product is shrinking and is little more than a rounding error on the trillion dollar economies that count. Trading screens cover the three major time zones and not every little nation and group that populates the globe. Even with these restrictions, however, trading screens are rich in texture and information. They are not just surfaces. Behind every window, dozens of others can be opened and closed. Calculations can be called up and made on the spot. Information can be requested and is instantly available, at all times. Social relations carry on and jokes are made. And, of course, one trades through the screen, through the electronic channel. All trading in currency markets, for instance, is conducted electronically. Screens are rich, and they are not only there for trading. They are the world for those who sit in front of them. The question posed at the beginning of this essay is larger than it may have initially seemed. When the screens go black, a world goes black. But what happens if that world goes black? Twenty years from now, even in ten years, the answer could be “nothing at all”. The screens project the market, but in the future the market might carry on just as well without screens. The contextual information will be necessary and will remain available – available to programs that receive and decode it without displaying it onscreen. The scopic regime under which electronic financial markets operate could simply © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2016 Published by Springer International Publishing AG 2016. All Rights Reserved L. Introna et al. (Eds.
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