A lonely man in the desert: on the question of the existence in the virtual world

Abstract

The object of research of this article is the existential experience of a person in a virtual space, realized in the phenomenon of loneliness. The subject of the study is the refraction of the desert metaphor in relation to the virtual world. As you know, the development of modern information technologies has led to a change in the existential coordinates of a person, therefore, immersion in the virtual space for the current generation is becoming more and more relevant, and sometimes replacing many real events. The question of the interaction of man and technology acquires contradictory facets, because the threat of total convergence of virtuality and reality no longer seems so mythical. It is these provisions that force us to reconsider the position of a person in the modern world and try to assess this. The paper attempts to analyze the existential space of the virtual world of man through the metaphor of the desert. As a result, we can conclude first of all, that the natural desire of an individual to be in society can be perfectly realized in the virtual world, but it turns into an increased attention of the individual to himself (the need to satisfy his virtual requests), which leads him to a feeling of loneliness. And secondly, applying the metaphor of the desert to the virtual space, we see that it hides the context of solitude, care, to find answers to many questions. A person in the virtual world sees himself through the prism of his request into the virtual void, sometimes without even waiting for an answer to it, which once again confirms the idea of some kind of existential experience of loneliness in the Internet space. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the application of the metaphor of the desert to the existential space of the virtual world.