The Temporalization of Financial Markets: From Network to Flow

Abstract

We analyze several financial market architectures and argue that, in the course of their development, at least some of them moved from a network-based configuration to one based on a scopic mode of coordination. In networks, the mechanism of coordination is relational and selective; coordination emerges from passing things through the pipes that link the actors in the network. A scopic mechanism, in contrast, works through collecting things and beaming them simultaneously to an audience of observers. The transformation from relation-seeking actors to information-'provided' observers enabled a global flow market to emerge that moves across time zones. The article describes and explains historical exchange-based and over-the-counter markets; the temporalization of market complexity initiated by the ticker; the extension and transformation of temporal mechanisms in markets in which contemporary scoping systems first emerged; and some of the information processes which suggest that contemporary foreign exchange markets are not only flows of financial transactions, but streaming epistemic systems.

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