Socio-Technical Agency in Financial Markets

The Case of the Stock Ticker

Bibliographic Data

ID24304246
AuthorsAlex Preda (University of Edinburgh)
Year2006
Volume36
Issue5
Pages753-782
Publication date2006-10-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Studies of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0306-3127 • E-ISSN: 1460-3659
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0306312706059543
OpenAlexW2150798022
LanguageEN
Citations received85
References cited50

Recent discussions of calculative agency in financial markets (a variety of socio-technical agency) have stressed that technology constitutes markets through standardization. This raises the question of additional agential features of financial technologies, which may go beyond, supplement and embed standardization and calculability. I propose here the concept of ‘generator’ as a way of capturing such features of socio-technical agency in financial markets. I use this concept for examining the stock ticker, the first custom-tailored technology adopted by financial markets. I show that the ticker generated temporal structures and modes of visualizing these structures, together with representational languages, interpretive tools and boundaries associated with access to financial data.

financial data access · financial markets · Fintech · generators · Standardization · stock tickers · temporal structure · Visualization · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Information Systems Theories and Implementation