Virtual oversight over transnational capitalism: XBRL metadata and renewed government control of the global economy

As the recent and ongoing crisis in the world financial system shows, unregulated markets are dangerous for the world economy. Through the news media we have all become much more familiar with the virtual world of financial transactions in todayâs global economy than ever before. In this paper we address the difference between the âstrongâ virtual reality of immersive technological systems and the âweakâ virtual reality of digital culture in the information age. We examine how what Gramscii might have termed a âhegemonicâ shift in the control of the financial markets is unfolding through the mechanism of what Latour would term âinscriptionâ â using the mandatory introduction of XBRL to bring far greater transparency to the accounting of transnational corporations and a greater ability on the part of regulators to know precisely what is going on.As the recent and ongoing crisis in the world financial system shows, unregulated markets are dangerous for the world economy. Through the news media we have all become much more familiar with the virtual world of financial transactions in todayâs global economy than ever before. In this paper we address the difference between the âstrongâ virtual reality of immersive technological systems and the âweakâ virtual reality of digital culture in the information age. We examine how what Gramscii might have termed a âhegemonicâ shift in the control of the financial markets is unfolding through the mechanism of what Latour would term âinscriptionâ â using the mandatory introduction of XBRL to bring far greater transparency to the accounting of transnational corporations and a greater ability on the part of regulators to know precisely what is going on.