Untitled - socium.ge

208 Caitlin Zaloomletters to form words, BUL, or RED, for instance, and use this tag as a pitpersona. Project A made use of the already existing network of traders at theCBOT by recreating the possibility of knowing each trading partner andmarket participant. Because Project A was limited to members of the CBOT,it was quite likely that the traders operating on screen would be in regularexchanges in the pit. The first group of CBOT traders to try their skills on thescreen brought this intimate knowledge of pit social conditions with themonline. Personal and electronic interactions reinforced each other. 16 Thisrepresentation creates a marketplace on each screen. Even though each tradersat at a desk separated from the others, the Project A screen created a visualimage of the pit space projected onto an electronic network. Project A also didnot change the temporal conditions of trading significantly. The majority oftraders remained in Chicago. For most of the life of Project A, the system operatedonly during hours that the trading pit was closed. Since the bulk of tradingvolume remained in the pit, Project A traders worked without theadvantage of liquidity that ran through the nexus of exchange.When the CBOT developed the next generation of screens for electronictrading, the designers jettisoned the representation of the social network oftraders and developed screens that excluded any personal information. As Ihave noted, they changed the representation of the market by altering itsspatial and temporal dimensions. These new conditions set the stage for oldertraders, who relied on the space and time of the pit, to fade away. It was timefor a new kind of trader to emerge.CONCLUSIONGlobal financial markets are made up of networks, both technological andsocial. The interaction of these elements is a material force in the design andoperation of financial markets. Specifically, the technological and socialdimensions generate conflicting ideas and practices of space and time. Theseclashes surface in arguments over how to construct, govern, and act in efficientmarkets. From the nexus of the trading pit to the network of dealing screens,exchange technologies define the organization of financial competition, and inturn require new forms of economic conduct from traders. I would like to endwith four observations about technology, space, and time in financial marketsand the possibility for new actors to arise at their intersection.(1) In the transition from nexus to network we see a transformation of themarketplace. Network designers advocate a desocialized marketplace thatadheres to ideals of economic efficiency. However, creating such market technologiesrequires designers to construct a strategic social field. The newmarkets built around face-to-screen interactions divorce traders from social