Donald MacKenzie: An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (2006)

In An Engine, Not a Camera, Donald MacKenzie argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental ways. These new, Nobel Prize-winning theories, based on elegant mathematical models of markets, were not simply external analyses but intrinsic parts of economic processes.

Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, MacKenzie says that economic models are an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts. More than that, the emergence of an authoritative theory of financial markets altered those markets fundamentally. For example, in 1970, there was almost no trading in financial derivatives such as “futures.” By June of 2004, derivatives contracts totaling $273 trillion were outstanding worldwide. MacKenzie suggests that this growth could never have happened without the development of theories that gave derivatives legitimacy and explained their complexities.

MacKenzie examines the role played by finance theory in the two most serious crises to hit the world’s financial markets in recent years: the stock market crash of 1987 and the market turmoil that engulfed the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. He also looks at finance theory that is somewhat beyond the mainstream—chaos theorist Benoit Mandelbrot’s model of “wild” randomness. MacKenzie’s pioneering work in the social studies of finance will interest anyone who wants to understand how America’s financial markets have grown into their current form.

Publisher MIT Press, 2006
Inside Technology series
ISBN 0262134608, 9780262134606
377 pages

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Amber Hickey (ed.): A Guidebook of Alternative Nows (2012)

A Guidebook of Alternative Nows is a collaboratively created book.

34 visionary creative thinkers and makers contributed to this book which illuminates ways of devising more socially, economically, and ecologically just versions of now.

Contributors: Alex Kemman (The Valreep Collective), Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, Artist Bailout Collective, Billy Mark, Cheyenna Weber (SolidarityNYC), Antonio Scarponi (Conceptual Devices), Critical Art Ensemble, Ethan Miller, Fallen Fruit (David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young), Georg Hobmeier and Tommy Noonan, Howling Mob Society, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Jenny Cameron, Johannes Grenzfurthner (Monochrom), Marc Herbst and Christina Ulke (Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Editorial Collective), Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Ken Ehrlich and Kate Johnston, Llano Del Rio Collective, New Social Art School, Platform, Rori Knudtson (School of Critical Engagement), Santiago Cirugeda (Recetas Urbanas), Sasha Costanza-Chock, SPURSE, swearonourfriendship, T.J. Demos, Temporary Services, The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, Precarious Workers Brigade, The Vacuum Cleaner, The Yes Men, TradeSchool.coop, UrbanFarmers, Watts House Project.

Publisher The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2012
ISBN 978-0-615-64972-6
266 pages
via An Chaosdroid

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Lawrence Lessig: One Way Forward: The Outsider’s Guide to Fixing the Republic (2012)

“Something is clearly rotten in our Republic. Americans are disillusioned with the political system and angry as hell. They feel like outsiders in their own nation, powerless over their own lives, blocked from having a real voice in how they are governed. But all of this can change. Lawrence Lessig, the renowned Harvard Law School professor and political activist presents a user-friendly, bipartisan manifesto for revolution just when we need it the most. His audaciously simple solution? Kill political corruption at its root: money.”

Publisher Byliner Inc., San Francisco, February 2012
ISBN 1614520232, 9781614520238

Commentary: Cory Doctorow (BoingBoing, 2012).

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