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USA Edition | Today Is Monday, September 6, 2010 |
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London Markets: Interconnectedness Wise, Immediacy Driven
The civilizations that survive today prospered during the codex era when the concept of document moved from stone to parchment. The codex, what we now think of as a book, was emblazoned with serialized words indexed by numbered pages. The codex era has served humankind for thousands of years. No one expected it to ever end. But then came the Immediacy Era that instantaneously connects everyone to everyone else.
London
Beyond The Codex Lay Our Future
The evolution of civilization has been accompanied by and remains dependent upon communication.
Newsroom Magazine contributor Tony Koorlander says Britain goes wherever he goes. Not because he can pack the entire nation in his travel bag, but because like so many today, he travels with cell phone in hand. Even on holiday in Cyprus recently, we spoke frequently by phone. At other hours, Tony emailed updates to our editorial team and followed what we published — some authored by him while in Cyprus and much that was not.
Tony not only took Britain along on holiday, he took the whole world. Even when he was dining out or traveling on a bus traversing the Cypriot highlands.
Tony’s a brilliant chap — bright of mind, a quick study, easy to understand — and immediacy era savvy.
Immediacy what? some might wonder.
It’s a new world out there. The old one-to-many delivery system is out. Many-to-many is in.
Cyclical is out as well. Immediacy is very, very in. Everywhere.
One-To-Many Obsolescence
Tony’s many years with auntie beeb made him a codex contributor — both in video and in print. News materials were captured, edited and then aired at scheduled times and on specific channels. Had he been in print media, what he produced would have gone into ink-on-paper materials, but either way Tony was part of the codex era in news production.
For people over the age of 25, most all of what they knew of the world around them was produced and published in the codex era when codified daily increments to human knowledge were queued-up for scheduled publication by means of what are now outdated one-to-many technologies. The book was the first and the slowest — followed by magazines, newspapers and eventually broadcasting.
Until the recent transition from yesterday’s codex era to today’s emerging immediacy era, little or nothing was immediate, or easily obtained, or beyond the economic and procedural limitations of scheduled release. If the codex era was about the systematic production and scheduled release of authoritatively produced information, the immediacy era is about access, immediacy, uncertain authority and limitlessness reach.
Freedom And Interconnectedness
Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently spoke to the interconnectedness of markets. His interests are public markets — especially those that relate to commodities hedging and derivatives trading.
Many people think of interconnectedness in terms of reach — the ability to browse the globe for information. But reach is only one dimension of interconnectedness — for there is equally a time aspect for transactions and information that are inherently time sensitive.
Time Domain Interconnectedness
Digital Immediacy
Interconnectedness and instantaneousness are the constituents of immediacy — that is the ability to ascertain information or interact with others anywhere, at any time.
When the London markets opened today they were only one of many interleaving financial markets that make it possible to effectuate financial and securities transactions 24 hours a day. London markets are part of a distributed trading system today that interconnects and supports instantaneous arbitrages transactions with other major exchanges in Tokyo, Paris, New York, Seoul — and every other financial center around the globe.
The digital technology era is still unfolding. It’s reach and impact on our daily lives is yet to be fully understood, but it’s safe to say that nearly everything we know and do will in some way be dependent on the time domain interconnectedness. While we take digital immediacy for granted in our daily lives today, few of us grasp that our increasing dependency on the immediate availability of information or communications is itself a revolution. Our human codex, the sum total of all that we know or have written, from a long standing era based on the book concept to a fresh, and as yet untested, immediacy era — predicated on digital immediacy.
Whatever mankind may have known, or believed or sought to disseminate was made all the more easy when the codex format became automated by the invention of the printing press and movable type.
Immediacy Era Impact On Futures Markets
According to CFTC Chairman Gensler, digital immediacy has forever changed the nature and risks of securities market investing and trading. Where once it took days, and later hours, for transactions to impact prices at other trading centers, it now takes only a millisecond — or less. Speed of information is so critical to arbitrage transactions ( trades that even out prices over many markets ) that it can no longer be done by humans — only super computers capable of issuing buy and sell orders within a few millionths of a second.
As a result, what were once highly differentiated and largely independent markets that connected human traders have merged, by means of technological interconnection, into what is effectively a unary computer-driven marketplace open more or less around the clock.
Beyond The Codex
Just as the term MBA Think describes a fundamental, sometimes damaging change in corporate management, interconnectedness describes the evolution of what were once independent institutions into what have effectively become oligopoly institutions engaging in herd-driven activities.
The great civilizations that shaped human development evolved in the word-of-mouth era of human communication when the spoken word, passed from person to person, was the only source of information beyond one’s own personal experience. The civilizations that survive today prospered during the codex era when the concept of document moved from stone to parchment. The codex, what we now think of as a book, was emblazoned with serialized words indexed by numbered pages.
The codex era has served humankind for thousands of years. No one expected it to ever end.
But then came the Immediacy Era.
And look where we are now!
Anybody seen Tony?