Social Machines: How Recent Technological Advances have Aided Financialisation
Authors: Ma, Tiejun; McGroarty, Frank
Journal: Journal of Information Technology (2017)
DOI: 10.1057/s41265-017-0037-7
<jats:p>In recent years, financial markets have been fundamentally transformed by innovations in information technology, in particular with regard to the web, social networks, high-speed computer networks and mobile technologies. We borrow the concept of Social Machines from Web Science as a single concept that captures the essence of all these recent technological changes to argue that the emergence of these Social Machines has aided the transformation of financial markets and society. This study explores the formation of these Social Machines with three sample disruptive technologies – automated/high-frequency trading, social network analytics and smart mobile technology. Through critical reflective analysis of these three case studies, we assess the impact of information technology innovation on financialisation. We adopt three case studies – automated trading; market information extraction using social media technologies; and information diffusion and trader decision-making with mobile technology on financial and real sector changes – which demonstrate the increasing trend of transaction velocity, speculative trading, increased complex information network, accelerated inequali…