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In 24 hours, I plowed through Michael Lewis' new blockbuster Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, a book about the huge changes that have occurred in financial markets in the last three

decades. It's compelling reading.

Since 1987's Black Monday, markets have become increasingly computerized. Change was gradual at first, but in the last decade it has become rapid. Today, computerized markets trade faster

than ever before — faster, literally, than the blink of an eye. Trading is not done just by humans mashing buttons, but also by algorithms, which are programmed to take specific actions

based on conditions in the markets.

These changes began to really accelerate in 2005, when at the behest of the Securities and Exchange Commission — responding to public protests about cronyism — public exchanges went from

being utilities owned by their members, to corporations run for profit. Once competition was introduced, an array of new exchanges sprung up. By early 2008, there were 13 different public

exchanges. And these exchanges are not auditorium-style spaces teeming with shouting traders a la the New York Stock Exchange. They're servers in data centers, most of them clustered in

northern New Jersey. Today, there are upwards of 40 public exchanges, as well as a variety of opaque private exchanges — such as Goldman Sachs' Sigma X and Citigroup's CitiMatch — that are

known as dark pools.

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John Aziz is the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate editor at Pieria.co.uk. Previously his work has appeared on Business Insider, Zero Hedge, and

Noahpinion.