constant escape
winter withered, warm
A space for conjecture as well as informed opinions.
Whether or not you use some source material, be it a text or a lecture, or you just procure knowledge from thin air.
Any and all topics.
An occasion to bolster both your personal understanding of a given topic, as well as the rigor of conversation here. attempting to exploit social incentivization in order to foster intellectual efforts.
MIT 15.S08 FinTech: Shaping the Financial World, Spring 2020
Class 1: Intro and Key Technological Trends Affecting Financial Services
An introductory session, so it was mainly an overview for the course.
The definition given for fintech was the one provided by the Financial Stability Board:
The professor, Gary Gensler, gave the examples of the telegraph and the telephone, explaining that they expedited or otherwise optimized certain payment processes. He also stressed the disruptive nature of such technologies, seeing as they tend to reorient certain aspects or circuits within the larger financial system.
I had the thought that perhaps this kind of disruptive impact, if below a certain impactfulness threshold, merely serves to reorient processes within a system, whereas if it is above some kind of impactfulness threshold, it can serve to reorient the system itself, ushering in some kind of novel paradigm shift, phase shift, etc.
That is, if a certain technical innovation enables enough of a breadth of new techniques, it may warrant a transformation of the pre-existing system around it, rather than merely a partial adjustment of the system into which it was introduced.
How technical impact can be quantized, and how that critical threshold can be ascertained, I don't know. I'm sure you can find some data that dances around it, points at it, but I'm not sure how robustly. Perhaps data to do with the introduction/resurgence of certain keywords within certain texts, or any increases in the frequency of new keywords, etc.
Gensler also brings up the so called "Big Tech DNA loop" that consists of data, networks, and activities.
He used Facebook as an example, having a network of around two billion users (taking his word for that), around whom data are cultivated. Facebook can robustify its data collection by introducing new activities for its users.
Another interesting point Gensler brought up: BlackRock, one of the top firms in the world. What that really entails, I don't know. But his point was that BlackRock uses machine learning to listen into conferences and discussions on finance, to track which keywords prove to be associated/correlated with market incline/decline.
Wiki on BlackRock:
The course is gonna get into AI more, as well as blockchain. Gensler, who used to work for Goldman Sacks in some capacity, briefly asserted that blockchain is exerting a distinct and novel force on finance, but he didn't make it sound impactful enough to reorient the whole global financial system. That said, he's yet to have gone into detail about it.
Whether or not you use some source material, be it a text or a lecture, or you just procure knowledge from thin air.
Any and all topics.
An occasion to bolster both your personal understanding of a given topic, as well as the rigor of conversation here. attempting to exploit social incentivization in order to foster intellectual efforts.
MIT 15.S08 FinTech: Shaping the Financial World, Spring 2020
Class 1: Intro and Key Technological Trends Affecting Financial Services
An introductory session, so it was mainly an overview for the course.
The definition given for fintech was the one provided by the Financial Stability Board:
The professor, Gary Gensler, gave the examples of the telegraph and the telephone, explaining that they expedited or otherwise optimized certain payment processes. He also stressed the disruptive nature of such technologies, seeing as they tend to reorient certain aspects or circuits within the larger financial system.
I had the thought that perhaps this kind of disruptive impact, if below a certain impactfulness threshold, merely serves to reorient processes within a system, whereas if it is above some kind of impactfulness threshold, it can serve to reorient the system itself, ushering in some kind of novel paradigm shift, phase shift, etc.
That is, if a certain technical innovation enables enough of a breadth of new techniques, it may warrant a transformation of the pre-existing system around it, rather than merely a partial adjustment of the system into which it was introduced.
How technical impact can be quantized, and how that critical threshold can be ascertained, I don't know. I'm sure you can find some data that dances around it, points at it, but I'm not sure how robustly. Perhaps data to do with the introduction/resurgence of certain keywords within certain texts, or any increases in the frequency of new keywords, etc.
Gensler also brings up the so called "Big Tech DNA loop" that consists of data, networks, and activities.
He used Facebook as an example, having a network of around two billion users (taking his word for that), around whom data are cultivated. Facebook can robustify its data collection by introducing new activities for its users.
Another interesting point Gensler brought up: BlackRock, one of the top firms in the world. What that really entails, I don't know. But his point was that BlackRock uses machine learning to listen into conferences and discussions on finance, to track which keywords prove to be associated/correlated with market incline/decline.
Wiki on BlackRock:
The course is gonna get into AI more, as well as blockchain. Gensler, who used to work for Goldman Sacks in some capacity, briefly asserted that blockchain is exerting a distinct and novel force on finance, but he didn't make it sound impactful enough to reorient the whole global financial system. That said, he's yet to have gone into detail about it.
