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 inequality and leverage. Our findings demonstrate that technologically enabled financial Social Machines harness crowd wisdom, engage disparate individual traders to produce more accurate price estimations, and have enhanced decision-making capability. However, these same changes can also have a simultaneously detrimental effect on financial and real sectors, in some situations exacerbating underlying distortions, such as misinformation due to complex information networks, speculative trading behaviour, and higher volatility with transaction velocity. Overall, we conclude that these innovations have transformed the fundamental nature of key aspects of the finance industry and society as a whole.

中文翻译：

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社交机器：最近的技术进步如何帮助金融化

近年来，金融市场因信息技术的创新而发生了根本性的转变，尤其是在网络、社交网络、高速计算机网络和移动技术方面。我们从 Web Science 借用社交机器的概念作为一个单一的概念，它捕捉了所有这些最近技术变革的本质，以论证这些社交机器的出现帮助了金融市场和社会的转型。本研究通过三种颠覆性技术样本——自动化/高频交易、社交网络分析和智能移动技术，探讨了这些社交机器的形成。通过对这三个案例研究的批判性反思分析，我们评估了信息技术创新对金融化的影响。我们采用三个案例研究——自动交易；使用社交媒体技术提取市场信息；以及通过移动技术对金融和实体部门变化的信息传播和交易者决策——这表明交易速度、投机交易、复杂信息网络增加、不平等和杠杆率加速上升的趋势。我们的研究结果表明，技术支持的金融社交机器利用群体智慧，让不同的个体交易者进行更准确的价格估算，并增强了决策能力。然而，这些相同的变化也可能同时对金融和实体部门产生不利影响，在某些情况下会加剧潜在的扭曲，例如由于复杂的信息网络导致的错误信息，投机性交易行为，以及交易速度的更高波动性。总的来说，我们得出的结论是，这些创新已经改变了金融业和整个社会关键方面的基本性质。