Global Clock - Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics - page 126

The high-speed flow of foreign exchange was recorded over the course of
the exhibition, which spanned the turn of the millennium. While the world was
watching the celebrations make their way around the globe, following the path
of latitudes across the longitudinal lines, the clock just kept on ticking. There had
been ominous predictions that computer systems would fail, confused by the dis -
appearance of the digits “19” in the electronic date field. Nothing failed. I have
clipped a few images from the densest five minutes of currency trading on the last
business day of 1999 (December 30, 9:25 to 9.30 a.m.) and again the densest five
minutes on the first full business day of 2000 (January 3, 4:55 to 5:00 p.m.), and
in between, the entire data flow of December 31, 1999 and January 1, 2000, com -
pressed into a very fast five minutes of transactions were recorded by Reuters,
worldwide, and nothing much happened. The clock just kept ticking, and the
money just kept moving.