Patenting financial algorithms made finance seem scientifically grounded
Evidence
It should be noted that another neoliberal phenomenon came into play to reinforce the equation of physical technology and finance. As described in detail in ScienceMart, the expansion of the patent system to encompass all sorts of previously unpatentable phenomena occurred in the 1980s. One of the major classes of newly minted intellectual property was precisely “business methods,” particularly those which were inscribed within computer programs. Almost immediately, a wave of financial algorithms were newly patented; and this, in turn, rendered financial manipulations conceptually more on a par with technologies that had been previously subject to being reduced to intellectual property. What was posited as a newly valid classification ended up as real in its consequences. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 957
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how the neoliberal thought collective converts normative positions into seemingly natural-technical facts; also links to the broader patent-expansion argument in the author’s ScienceMart. — connects to: Academic findings directly spawned commercial investment products — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 438; CAPM arose from an operations-research method borrowed from physics-style infinitesimal analysis. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 565; Finance theory altered its own empirical object of study — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 388 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Finance theory altered its own empirical object of study
#expands(0.78) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 388 - Financialization treats risk as probabilisable, displacing close knowledge of the object valued
#corroborates(0.78) — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 35 - The discovery-then-acceptance narrative misdescribes how financial economics shaped markets
#corroborates(0.75) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 386