All too real metacapitalism: towards a non-dualist political ontology of metaverse

Abstract

Current techno-utopian visions of metaverse raise ontological, ethical, and political questions. Drawing on existing literature on virtual worlds but also philosophically moving beyond that body of work and responding to political contexts concerning identity, capitalism, and climate, this paper begins to address these questions by offering a conceptual framework to think about the ontology of metaverse(s) in ways that see metaverse as real, experienced and shaping our experience, technologically constituted, and political. It shows how this non-dualist political-ontological approach helps to better identify, understand, predict, and evaluate some real and potentially dangerous ethically and politically relevant phenomena, including what I call ‘metacapitalism’’s environmentally problematic dream.