Center for Innovative Financial Technology Launches at Berkeley
Congratulations to Berkeley on setting up a “Center for Innovative Financial Technology“ [link to http://cift.haas.berkeley.edu/index.html no longer works], but I wonder why their mission is so conservative?
The mission of the Center is to conduct and facilitate innovative research and teaching on how new technologies impact global electronic markets, investment strategies, and the stability of the financial system.
The information people use to make financial decisions is changing. Brokers are disintermediated by electronic market access. Reporter/editor/reader relationships are disintermediated by web access to primary sources. Technology has provided the means to deliver a great deal of financially relevant information. It has lagged in providing the means to make sense of it in a timely manner. This is an important focus of CIFT research.
As Digicash was saying back in 1994, numbers are money [link to http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/mepeirce/Project/Press/digibro.html no longer works] now. Studying technology in its impact on information, without paying attention to now the information is money seems like studying how compression algorithms will allow us to deliver music to record stores, to be pressed on demand into fresh vinyl.
Digicash went broke! Part of the reason at least was that they didn’t master the conservative nature of finance (it’s not easy, others like myself also came adrift) and adopted a threatening posture that put them at odds with the establishment.