Metaverse-Flight From Dusk to Darkness?

The article studies the phenomenon of the metaverses, that is, projects developed by technology companies, where physical, virtual and augmented (extended) realities are brough together in digital space. Apologists for the metaverses argue that soon the Internet will cease to exist in the usual sense, and its place will be taken by the metaverses as global virtual spaces for communication, work, and leisure. This vision is compared with the concept of the Panopticon, formulated by Jeremy Bentham and subsequently interpreted by Michel Foucault. The growing dependence of the state, the society, and the individual on technology and their increasing interconnection forms a set of problems with an ever increasing acuteness, yet no obvious solution has been found so far. The article demonstrates how technology manipulates human weaknesses, increasing its power and gaining control over society. Among the major risks related to the metaverses are the decay of values and morality in the virtual world, and the collapse of the individual's identity. Possible scenarios of interaction between human and technology are illustrated by Tarkovsky's Solaris, Cronenberg's Videodrome, and Folman's Congress. The study ends with an assumption that a new socio-humanitarian rationality must be formed to enable control over the logic of the development of tech companies promoting the metaverses.