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Web Issue Ticker, by Richard Rogers and Govcom.org, is an interactive projection which re-uses financial ticker technology for the benefit of political activism. Instead of showing the evolution of share prices, the Issue Ticker shows the evolution of a variety of social problems.

In the same way that tickers provide the latest information about the state of shares, the Issue Ticker provides information about the state of social problems. Rogers’ piece places the visitor in front of a touch-sensitive screen. Across the screen one can see issues of a social nature, such as “sustainable development”, “discrimination and racism” and “human rights”. These captions are not static, they move from right to left, imitating the slow mechanical rhythm of a financial ticker. In contrast to the ticker, however, the installation does not convey information about share prices (in the manner of “IBM 41 4/16”), but about social problems. Next to each issue, an arrow pointing up or down (coloured green or red respectively) denotes the latest developments in the matter. We observe, for example, how the “North-South dialogue” is on the up, and “anti-globalization movements” are on the down, and that “poverty” remains unchanged. The outcome is to further heighten the analogy between the installation and a financial ticker.

The installation is interactive, moreover, and allows users to explore the issues further thanks to a hierarchical search design. When one of the onscreen issues is pressed, a second sequence of related issues is displayed. When one presses “women’s rights”, for example, the related issues “under-development” and “engineers without borders” appear. Similarly, when one presses on one of these a number of related articles and Internet addresses are brought to the foreground. Pressing on “engineers without borders”, for example, leads to an Internet link that connects to an international association dealing with the subject, www.ewb-international.org/. In this sense, the Web Issue Ticker can be seen as a tool for navigating contemporary global issues.

Ticker technology applied to the issues presented by the installation has an interesting effect. With the movement of text from right to left (in the opposite direction to our way of looking) the installation shortens the time available for reading. This rapidity dons the issues with dynamism, immediacy and an up-to-the-minute quality.

The Issue Ticker extends financial representation and applies it to political and social ends. For over a century the search for profits has driven the invention of a sophisticated range of financial representations of values. The ticker is just one of many such inventions, others include price charts and stock indexes. Invented in 1867 by E. A. Callahan, the ticker incorporated the state of the art telecommunications technology of the day, the telegraph, to the realm of finance. A printer connected to a telegraph, printed out on a continuous feed a list of shares and their prices. The names of the companies were reduced to arcane symbols – the famous ticker symbols– to save telegraphic bandwidth.

The ticker had disproportionate effects on the financial industry. For the first time ever, it freed the prices of shares from the four walls of the stock exchanges, allowing investors to follow the price of their shares from a distance. This provoked the unexpected phenomenon of geographically concentrating American stock exchange activity around New York, and the decline of activity at the Philadephia stock exchange. The ticker also altered the relationship between the investor and shares, creating an attachment to financial securities. Finally, the ticker has been up-graded and re-designed over the years. Hence, for example, the combination of ticker and television ushered in a new genre: financial television. Examples of this are the American channels CNBC, CNN Moneyline and Bloomberg TV. The ticker, moreover, decorates numerous façades of buildings in Manhattan’s Times Square.

Rogers’ installation translates the historical context of the ticker, of the 19th century investors, to the present moment. What are the burning issues? Where are they happening? How can one find out more about them? These questions apply to both the stock exchange and politics, in the 19th century as much as in the 21st. By its appropriation of a technology of success, such as the ticker, the installation highlights the interesting possibility of improving public participation thanks to technology.

The Web Issue Index was exhibited at Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy at the Centre of Art and Media ZKM in Karlsruhe, in 2005. The installation is part of a wide range of artefacts and ventures led by Richard Rogers to promote political participation in digital environments. Rogers is a lecturer in New Media at the University of Amsterdam, Director of the Govcom.org Foundation, and visiting professor in Science Studies at the University of Vienna. The other members of Govcom.org who work on the Web Issue Index are Karel Brascamp, Astrid Mager, Zachary Devereaux, Marieke van Dijk, Auke Touwslager, Anat Ben-David and Marc Tuters. Former collaborators include Luke Pendrell, Martin Aberdeen, Steffie Verstappen and Greg Callman. Versions of the Web Issue Index have been supported by the Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany, and Infodrome, the Dutch governmental information society initiative. The Web Issue Index is described in detail in R. Rogers, Information Politics on the Web, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.