Virtual Capital: Computers and the Making of Modern Finance, 1929-1975

Abstract

This dissertation describes the entangled history of computing and capitalism in the United States, and the role of computer science and technology in mediating the emergence of a financialized economy. It tracks two major patterns of influence: first, the role of computer science and technology in the development of economic theories and operations of securities markets; second, the transformation of the computer as it was reinvented to serve the needs of new economic and social challenges concerning the organization of capital. Drawing on archival research from the papers of computer scientists, economists, businesses, financial regulators, and the New York Stock Exchange, this work documents the place of computing in the creation of modern approaches to financial strategy, securities regulation, and electronic trading, and situates these developments in a longer historical trajectory in which computing machines were deployed and remade in efforts to organize industrial and later financial capital.