Semiotics of speculative information : financial markets, electronic technologies and sign mediation

Abstract

The theme of this research falls under the inquiries about the forms of human-machine interactivity and about the semiotic mechanisms characteristic of speculative cybernetics. Despite the impact of financial markets on our lives, little is known about the role of representations in financial speculation. The traders combine the processing of mathematical calculations to probabilistic predictions, perform diagrammatic experiments and manipulate propositional formulas in order to map the “market” with the objective of composing their “bet” in order to trigger, or “execute” the action: a “command” to buy or sell. The implicit phenomenon to be studied is semiosis: the action, or influence, that is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, a Sign, its Object and its Interpretant. The dissemination of new technologies for mediating financial and speculative interactions and the impact of information representation strategies on the day-to-day life of contemporary capitalist societies demand the investigation of the peculiarities of speculative information. The expansion of scientific horizons in the field of social communication studies futher justifies the endeavor. The study focuses on the action of peculiar semiotic events within the technological-cognitive ecology of electronic speculation in search of mechanisms that capture a characteristic epistemic value, implicit in the semiotic transit. The initial hypothesis is the existence of a kind of “semiotic capital” immersed in the semiotic exchange between specialized representations, a form of mechanism implicit in the operation of speculative artifacts, or, more specifically, when the epistemic activity generates a dividend of “speculative knowledge”. The theoretical, qualitative and multidisciplinary study moves between the fields of information theory and semiotics, drawing on studies of political economy, political economy of information, theories and hypotheses of economic sociology and studies of micro sociology of financial markets in the field of sociology of science and technology, research and development of visualization interfaces, theories of cognition, biosemiotics and philosophy of mathematics, when it examines the peculiar sign forms through analytical models based on the Peircean doctrine of signs, with the objective of identifying innovative technological-cognitive compositions directed at the processes of communication of speculative information. The approach of the empirical subject of the study consisted of a survey and selection of documents and literature produced by the research and development of the specialized technoscience, the research of electronic interfaces for operations on financial markets, and a critical selection of “samples”, or significant examples, of visualization artifacts, data mapping and cognitive experimentation. How is speculative information composed? What is the status of representations in speculative cybernetics? How can we explain the role of signs in semiotic mediations in electronic financial markets? These questions lead us to investigate: (i) how specialized cognitive artifacts are composed, (ii) how semiotic operators and mechanisms interact in the mediation of speculative information, (iii) whether the concept of semiotic capital can point to new ways of explaining the capture of value in speculative cybernetics. The hypothesis of “semiotic capital” points to a modality of stabilization of existing mediation mechanisms in the form of imagetic, diagrammatic, metaphorical and propositional signs, articulated by specialized modes of communication and accelerated by advanced computational competence to generate a type of “speculative information” peculiar to electronic markets. Speculative semiotic capital can be described as a type of information that is both concrete and abstract, and that acts as “proof” of knowledge of the state of the system (value) determined by the “speculative” interpretative vector. The study can be expanded to include the development of electronic markets for mobile applications, non-fungible tokens and online gambling, in addition to providing relevant variables for empirical investigations.