Introduction

Advances in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology together with the success of increasingly realistic computer games with 3D worlds have led to the development of visions and technological projects aimed at creating new virtual worlds that are more immersive and more all-encompassing. Whether virtual worlds that simulate the existing world or new virtual worlds, for these so-called metaverses VR and AR technologies are used to create worlds in which one is more immersed than in 2D worlds and in which one can interact with others and make economic transactions.

For example, the vision of the company Meta,Footnote 1 which aims to be the main player in this market, is to bring people together and to let people experience ‘anything,’ thereby unlocking a new economy (Velazco, 2021). Inspired by science-fiction, what they refer to as “the” metaverse is said to contain virtual public rooms, work spaces, and home spaces, but also entire worlds, in which one can wander represented by an avatar and spend money on digital goods. Meta would offer access to all this via wearable headsets that enable so-called “mixed reality”: users would be able to see the physical world but the technology would weave in digital elements in a way that does not just overlay digital images on the physical world but allows more interaction between physical and digital elements, and enables users to interact with the virtual elements as if they would do in the physical world.Footnote 2

While these particular plans did not become a success story during the past years, given that the underlying technologies are further developed (also with the help of artificial intelligence, which creates more realistic and dynamic virtual environments) and that our use of digital technologies becomes increasingly immersive and all-encompassing, it is nevertheless interesting to think about the ontological status and potential normative impact of metaverses. How can we philosophically conceptualize metaverses and understand their ethical and political dimensions and implications?

There has already been work on the ontology and ethics of virtual worlds in the 1990s (Rheingold, 1991; Heim, 1993) and later on video games and Second Life. Moreover, some have discussed ethical problems, including ethical problems raised by metaverses (Brey, 2008; Heim, 1998; MacDonald, 2022; Nuncio & Felicilda, 2021). For example, early on Brey (2008) already discussed some ethical issues raised by behavior in virtual environments. This includes the psychological and virtue consequences of violent and degrading behavior and the question whether rape in virtual environments is possible and unethical. Other issues are virtual child pornography and virtual prostitution. Interesting questions in the light of Meta’s vision concern those related to virtual economies, for example regarding ownership and intellectual property. With regard to metaversess themselves, specialized philosophical academic literature is yet to emerge, but there is work on augmented reality games (Nuncio & Felicilda, 2021) that can be used for this purpose, and when it comes to ethical and political concerns, MacDonald (2022) has already warned in a Guardian article that ‘the’ metaverse is problematic when dominated by capitalism and exploitation. I will return to that point.

Answers to these ethical and political questions depend on one’s analysis of the ontology of virtual worlds. With regard to ontology, Søraker (2011) already reflected on the nature of virtual reality (a term coined by Lanier, 1992) and defined it as an interactive computer simulation. Brey (2014) asked what mode of existence virtual objects, actions, and events have and argued that they sometimes can be part of the real world. Earlier Heim (1993) started from a different, more Heideggerian understanding of ontology and argued that with virtual reality, our epistemological stance shifts (p. xiii): ontology is not only about what “is” but also how it makes us experience and know the world in a different way. The question is then how computer-generated worlds change how we perceive the world. Typically, early treatments of this question express either enthusiasm for the new escapist possibilities offered by virtual worlds or – like Heim (1998) – fear that people will no longer be sufficiently grounded in reality.

This interesting body of academic work, including its normative concerns, is yet to be applied to metaverses in a systematic and comprehensive way. In particular, we need a more up to date analysis based on the ontology of metaverses in their developed version (as opposed to existing work on computer games and Second Life, which do not use VR or mixed reality technology) and we need an ethical and political analysis based on that ontological analysis. Especially a political analysis is often missing in existing evaluations of virtual worlds, which tend to focus on ethics.Footnote 3

In the following pages I aim to make a start with these tasks. I will also respond to a recent work in popular philosophy about the reality of virtual worlds (Chalmers, 2022) and bring in contemporary political contexts, in particular discussions about identity and about climate and the environment. In this way, I aim to remedy the situation that much philosophical and technical work on virtual worlds is alienated from their political surroundings and/or misleadingly understands itself as apolitical or politically neutral. Instead, I will emphasize that metaverses, understood as technologies and as techno-utopian visions, are deeply political. Furthermore, I will argue for a non-dualist political ontology of metaverses, which sees metaverses as fully real. This non-dualist approach will help to better understand, predict, and evaluate some ethically and politically relevant phenomena, including what I call ‘metacapitalism’’s environmentally problematic dream.

Ontologies of metaverses: from dualism to non-dualism

How to conceptualize the ontology of metaverses? I propose to distinguish between at least the following approaches to metaverses’s ontology, both in the sense of conceptualizing “what is” and in the sense of understanding how this changes our perception and experience of the world. I will also already indicate some normative positions with regard to the good life. In line with Brey and Chalmers I will first understand this notion in an individual way, as referring to individual happiness, self-fulfillment, and well-being, but later I will add a social and political dimension and emphasize a non-consumerist conception of the good life. In the next section I will say more about the politics of metaverses.

Metaverses are not real

A first way of conceptualizing metaverses is to say that they are not real. This is what we may call the Platonic approach. Plato famously distinguished between appearance and reality. In his allegory of the cave (Republic 514a-520a), he describes prisoners chained to the wall of a cave that only see the shadows projected on the cave wall from objects passing in front of a fire. They do not see the real objects and their true forms. Philosophers are then supposed to liberate themselves from this shadow world and see reality as it is. Similarly, metaverses’s virtuality could be described as not real. Metaverses are caves. The users-prisoners think it is real and want to stay in that world. The normative task is then to turn to the light: to the real world. Philosophers need to help with this.

This way of seeing metaverses is similar to the experience of the internet in the 1990s: “cyberspace” is seen as another world: one that is not real, but nevertheless is interesting to explore and escape to. Visions of metaverses mobilize this image when it suggests fantastic worlds that could be explored now. Alternatively, the “fake” world is feared and rejected. Instead of living online or in virtual reality, it is argued, we should live in the real world. The good life is only possible in the real world.

Metaverses can sometimes be real

One problem with the Platonic approach is that some things that happen in metaverses have real consequences. For example, if someone is harassed in a metaverse this may have psychological consequences that are very real for the person whose avatar is subject to such treatment. And if I make money in a metaverse and buy a real house with it in “real” life, then how unreal was that (making of) money? A second way to define the ontology of metaverses is therefore to say that metaverses can sometimes be real and sometimes not, depending on the object and action. This is Brey’s (2008, 2014) approach to virtual worlds. When social objects such as money are reproduced in virtual reality, then those objects are real. And actions in virtual worlds have extravirtual consequences. This link to reality can be ethically problematic, for example when people are harassed, but also opens up opportunities: it is used by companies such as Meta when it is projected that metaverses constitute a new economic space. If there was no link to reality, it would not be possible to make money. Nevertheless, in this view, there is still a boundary between “virtual” metaverses and “real” life – even if in some cases there can be ontological uncertainty (Brey, 2008, 2014). Normative questions, for example ethical questions, are then all about this boundary. For example: can I own intellectual property for my avatar or virtual property in a metaverse? When are such objects real or how real are they in which context? According to this approach, whether we can live the good life in virtual worlds such as metaverses thus depends on these boundaries and boundary crossings.

This way of seeing metaverses corresponds to experiences of the internet as not just a magical new frontier to explore but a place to do business and a place that can be ethically problematic. In the early 2000s, the internet was no longer romanticized as a totally different world but came to be seen as a new market place, full of opportunities. Later smartphones and social media helped to further unlock these possibilities. The metaverses vision still draws on this expectation when it highlights its economic opportunities. And for this to actually happen, there needs to be some reality in it. In order to make money, metaverses need to be real enough.

Metaverses are real but they are digital reality, not physical reality

Brey’s approach seems helpful but leads to much confusion and controversy over the reality of virtual things within metaverses. This could be avoided by recognizing the reality of metaverses. One step further towards such full recognition of the reality of metaverses is to say what Chalmers (2022) says about virtual worlds in Reality+ (a work that is remarkably divorced from the existing literature in philosophy of technology): virtual worlds are real, ‘genuine reality.’ In contrast to Brey, Chalmers claims that the objects we interact with in virtual reality are always real. While it is not clear what Chalmers means by ‘real’ or ‘reality’ in this context, his view helps to explain why users interact with them as if they were real. However, this approach remains dualist to the extent that he still sees these objects as part of ‘digital reality’ as opposed to physical reality, although he thinks that the latter may also be virtual (which brings in some form of Platonism again and raises the question where the real world is). In Chalmer’s view, there are thus at least two worlds. Similarly, metaverses could be seen as digital reality as opposed to physical reality. It is another world, perhaps another virtual world. This is still a dualist way of understanding metaverses, albeit one that does not oppose “unreal” metaverses caves to the light of the real, but instead acknowledges the existence of two (kinds of) realities: digital and non-digital. In that sense, it is already less dualist: it is a form of weak dualism compared to the stronger versions identified earlier. Moreover, in Chalmer’s normative vision, virtual worlds are not necessarily a space to make money, dominated by big corporations: he rejects artificial scarcity in metaverses and rather dreams of a metaverse where there is digital abundance, embracing Nozick’s (1974) idea of meta-utopia in which people would be able to choose the worlds in which they want live. (Thornhill, 2022) More generally, Chalmers thinks the good life is possible in virtual worlds.

This way of seeing metaverses corresponds to the daily experience of most people when today they roam in virtual worlds and play computer games. Already in 2003 a virtual space “Second Life” was created, but since then the quality of virtual worlds and games has progressed significantly. The “virtual” reality of these worlds and games is so realistic, engaging, and interactive that to call them “virtual” becomes increasingly senseless. These worlds and games constitute realities, albeit digital – or so it is experienced. People immerse themselves in them and experience them as meaningful. Here too there are utopian expectations about a good, potentially better existence in such worlds, although Chalmers also warns for cyberbullying, threats to privacy, and the domination of big tech. (Thornhill, 2022)

There is only one reality (non-dualist view)

The problem with this view, however, is that in spite of Chalmer’s claims to the contrary, digital/non-digital dualism still seem to deny the status of full reality to an increasingly important part of human experience (interaction with metaverses and other virtual worlds). By calling virtual worlds digital reality, their reality status seems to still fall somewhat below non-digital reality. (And to call the physical world virtual raises the same problem: in that case the world that appears to us is less real than the reality we do not have access to.) This could be avoided by saying that there is only one reality: one could hold a non-dualist view.

Here there are two possibilities. First, one could hold a naturalistic view or digitalistic view, according to which digital reality is part of physical reality (metaverses are part of physical reality) or physical reality is part of digital reality (the physical world is also virtual). Ultimately this is how Chalmers avoids a strong dualist view: we already live in a virtual world. A similar way out of dualism is an informationalist view, which Floridi (2011) defends: if everything is information, then there is also no dualism. This is one way to take seriously metaverses as real.

However, one could also hold the view that there is one reality which is transformed and constructed by the new technology/metamedium, and which is not independent from our ways of seeing, experience, and knowing that reality. Here the point is not the superficial one that the simulation gets better and that therefore virtual worlds get more real (this would still be a dualistic view) but rather that the interaction Brey talks about is real and that there is one reality in the sense of a reality-as-experienced-by-me and as co-constituted and transformed by the technology. There is no reality an sich (or, from a Kantian point of view: at least we cannot know it), but only a reality that is shaped by technology/media and by my perception, and metaverses are part of that reality. What metaverses “is”, is at least also a matter of how I perceive it and this perception is in turn shaped by metaverses’s technologies and narratives.

The latter approach does not see technologies and media related to metaverses as collections of things that become part of reality (or not), but rather as themselves (together with the visions and narratives) shaping how we experience and know the world. They thus have an ontological function, but not in the sense of creating “virtual” objects and changing (or not changing) “what is”. Instead, they change the world in the sense of changing how we see the world. Metaverses here are understood as ontological in the sense of Heim (1993, 1998) and Heidegger (1977), who connected technology to ways of thinking. Metaverses do not constitute a new reality (or virtuality) in the sense of creating a separate world but instead change our reality and my reality. The point is not only that what happens in metaverses is real – for example, if it is said that an avatar is bullied or excluded then this is misleading language: what happens is that a person is bullied or excluded – but also that using metaverses changes how we perceive reality as a whole. The main ontological question is no longer about boundaries between real and virtual but about how I and we relate to the world, given that that very epistemic relation is transformed by metaverses and other technologies and narratives. Ontology becomes epistemology. In terms of the history of philosophy, we have finally moved beyond dualist Platonism and pre-Socratic views of the world (“everything is information” as similar to “everything is water”) and we have arrived in the world of critical post-Kantian 20th century philosophy and its contemporary versions and applications. Asking about the ontology of metaverses is also at the same time asking about how we see the world. Ontology is entangled with epistemology. Metaverses are not about things (real or virtual) but about experience: human experience. And this insight is combined with contemporary philosophy’s post-Heideggerian emphasis on the more-than-instrumental role of technology: that human experience, perception of, and access to the world is shaped by technologies and media. Metaverses are not independent somethings to which we relate in an external way; instead, our thinking and perception is already shaped by metaverses and other digital technologies.

In terms of daily life in the 21st century, this approach captures the experience some of us already have today and many will have in the near future when using “digital” technologies: it becomes no longer apt to speak of two realities when our very experience of the world is mixed digital/non-digital. Epistemologically, when I relate to the “physical” world around me I often do that mediated by “digital” technologies, and with the new VR and AR technologies there is not a separate “digital” world but one experience. It is no longer my avatar that is moving through these worlds; rather, it is me and us moving through these worlds. It remains to be seen how metaverses will change our perception and shape reality; but it is and will be real. And this is not just about headsets: even when I do not use those technologies, I see and experience reality through for example digital social media. Even before metaverses, we already have a “mixed reality” experience. We have the experience that we live in one reality and experience as transformed by the technologies we use. Questions of the good life, therefore, have to be asked in relation to this one reality as experienced by human subjects and as transformed by technologies such as metaverses.

This is not to say that experiences within this one reality cannot differ. Just like in the rest of the real world experience differ depending on context, on relations with people, on particular technological mediations. Using a VR headset to talk with a relative in the context of a metaverse is a different experience than meeting that relative in person in her living room. But my point is not that both experiences are necessarily the same but instead that both experiences are real, and that even the in-person meeting might be shaped by the (previous or actual) use of technologies.

Today, it is by no means clear whether this experience and this reality will be shaped positively, given that – as Chalmers and many others argue – there are significant power asymmetries: big tech companies dominate how we live our lives. This is true for the internet and it is true once more for metaverses. Just as the internet has become a politically problematic space (consider for example cases of political manipulation and violations of the privacy of citizens), metaverses may also turn out more dystopian than expected. Today and in the near future, these political consequences are and will be real.

Overview

To conclude this analysis: while all four approaches correspond to experiences we may have in and with metaverses (it can be used as typology), the last one better conceptualizes the new pervasive and “mixed reality” possibilities (or rather: promises) of metaverses as opposed to earlier versions of virtual reality and virtual worlds. Moreover, this approach is philosophically more sophisticated and enables us to ask questions concerning the complex relations between technology and human experience. While further work needs to be done on what this could mean for metaverses, this promises an ontology of metaverses that goes beyond seeing it as virtual or digital, and takes seriously the various ways in which human thinking influences how we see this technology and vice versa.

Table 1 4 approaches to the ontology of metaverses
Full size table

Further advantages of the non-dualist approach: embodied and social reality

Taking this non-dualist approach to metaverses and other so-called “virtual” worlds has a number of additional advantages, which are related to embodied and social reality:

Embodied reality

First, the non-dualist approach is able to recognize the embodied nature of our performances in and through metaverses. This claim is of course about VR and AR used to produce metaverses, which establish a connection to my real body: my movement in so-called virtual reality is no longer not a real movement, it is real experienced movement as I move through virtual and mixed reality. With VR and AR, I am literally moving my whole body. The technology enables a more embodied experience in this sense. But in addition, the technology itself becomes part of my embodied experience. When I use a headset, I no longer experience the headset. It becomes part of my bodily way(s) of relating to the world. In postphenomenology, Ihde (1990) has described this in terms of a particular kind of human-technology relation: embodiment. My perception of the world is mediated by technologies in such a way that I no longer notice them, they become embodied in that sense. Applying this to metaverses, one could say that the VR and AR headset become a kind of glasses, which I no longer notice but which of course shape my (relation to) reality.

Thus, ‘embodiment’ refers here to Ihde’s conceptualization of a specific human-technology relation, but it also has a broader meaning. The claim that our performances in metaverses are embodied is also more fundamentally about the embodied nature of all our interactions and thinking. Once we recognize metaverses(s) as being part of one technologically transformed reality and experience, that reality and experience is also related to the body: the biological body and the body-as-experienced and performed. Whereas Platonic and other dualistic views such as that of Chalmers tend to leave the body behind in physical reality, the way of thinking about metaverses and other virtual realities proposed here includes the body and embodiment. Even without a headset, I am already engaging with digital technologies in an embodied way, and this does not change in metaverses. I always think, move, perform, and play in an embodied way.

Social reality

Second, a non-dualist view of metaverses and “virtual” worlds also enables us to include social reality. If metaverses are part of reality and transforms reality and experience, that reality and experience is also always a deeply social reality. Here I need to respond to Brey’s interesting use of Searle’s social ontology (Searle, 1995).Footnote 4 Searle argued that social facts and institutions are constructed by means of speech acts and status functions, in which we declare and agree that a particular material or immaterial object has a social status. For example, a 50-dollar banknote is money because we give it that function and agree that it has that function. In virtual worlds, objects are not physical, but that does not matter for status declaration and status function. According to Brey (2008), in virtual worlds there is ontological reproduction of real social objects, for example money and property. He argues that they can be real in virtual reality because they perform the same status functions. For example, we can agree that a virtual object counts as money, and this establishes a social fact. The view I propose is sympathetic to this social ontology approach and also acknowledges that such an object is then real money. However, whereas Searle and Brey still make a strict distinction between social facts and physical facts, the view proposed here understands both social and physical facts as experienced – and this experience being already social and shaped by the technologies. This implies that when it comes to ontology of metaverses, there is no strict distinction between physical and social, nor between “real” and “virtual”. There is no ”reproduction” of social objects in metaverses, but there are simply social objects. Moreover, metaverse technologies themselves shape how we see these objects and how we understand social institutions – in metaverses and elsewhere. What this means, for example, is that our experience of “physical” money in the so-called “real” world will also be influenced by our experience of “virtual money” in metaverses, which is already a social experience shaped by the technology: interacting with metaverses, we will come to understand more easily that, for example, paper money has only worth because we agree about it. Metaverses will transform not only the “virtual” economy but also the “real” economy and how we think about it: how we think about money, how we do business with one another, and so on.

Moreover, what happens here in terms of social facts and institutions is not just about objects and not just about individuals. It concerns how we do things together; it is about society in a wider sense of how we do things and what we tell each other, how we make sense of things. It is about institutions but also wider societal developments and not just about what we see as “facts” but also our narratives. With Ricoeur (1984), who emphasized the role of narrative in making sense of reality and in shaping social and political structures, one could understand metaverses’s social order as both narrative and real, and as experienced and (therefore) shaped by the technology. The point is that we do not only have stories about metaverses (such as the vision presented by Meta) but that the meta technologies and media also shape the experience of social reality. It is likely that we will increasingly experience reality (as a whole, not just “physical” reality) in terms of the narrative structures from metaverses and related technologies. Metaverses will give us narratives about ourselves and about (the future of) society, thus shaping the way we make sense of ourselves and how we order society: metaverses will be political. A non-dualistic ontology of metaverses incorporates these narratives, this meaning-making, and this political aspect. This also enables social and political criticism.

While this may sound abstract, it becomes less so once we consider how digital technologies already shape our narratives, which raises ethical questions (Reijers & Coeckelbergh, 2020) but also political ones. For example, digital contact tracing technologies played an important role in stories about the COVID-19 pandemic. They co-shaped how people perceived the risk of infection and the stories governments told to their citizens. Today metaverses are often linked to the narratives told by big tech companies and cannot be disconnected from them. Consider for example how the narratives and technologies offered by Meta are entangled: Meta can only tell its narratives about metaverses since there is already technology development in this area; at the same time, the narratives it tells is also shaping the development of the technologies and investment in these technologies – at Meta and elsewhere. Such corporate narratives will also impact how we make sense not only of the new technologies but also of how we live and how we live together. More generally, metaverses will interact with, and shape, various political phenomena, discussion, and contexts. Once we recognize this, we can critically discuss not only the social ontology but also the politics of metaverses.

Towards an analysis of the politics of metaverses: identity, power, and metacapitalism’s environmentally problematic dream

I already indicated some normative positions during my analysis of ontologies of metaverses, using the term ‘the good life’ to refer to individual ethics. But since at least Aristotle, the good life is not only to be understood in an individual way but has also an important political dimension. Here are a number of ways in which metaverses will not only change our experience of “what is” and impact the good life at individual level, but will also become political – if it is not already. Since metaverses are embodied and socially and politically very real, there are at least the following normative-political issues:

Bodies, identity, and power

First, metaverses, understood as real interactions but also as really and fully embodied, social, and political, will be inevitably entangled with political phenomena such as the MeToo movement and discussions about the color of avatars and about challenges trans and nonbinary people may experience in metaverses. Since we will interact with the technology and the worlds it creates by means of our bodies and representations of our bodies (avatars), metaverses will also invite the (identity) politics of metaverss bodies, for example gender politics. There can also be gender relevant harms and biases in so far as metaverses use politically problematic language models, for example when there is erasure of non-binary gender identities (Dev et al. 2021). This is not just about individual ethical and identity problems at all but also interacts with politics and is about the narratives we want to tell about the social. If narratives are not only about metaverse but also constitute them and shape the related social reality, then we can tell better metaverse stories. For example, we can tell a story about metaverses that is inclusive and recognizes diversity, or about capitalism’s hegemonic and oppressive structures. Metaverses will not only and not necessarily be communities of minds, perhaps communities as Leibniz envisioned them (Strickland, 2014), but also collections of virtual bodies that will be used, disciplined (Foucault, 1995) and politicized. The point is that once we recognize that metaverses are real, the political, social, and identity-related problems that might be encountered, for example by women, people who have a disability, or people who identify as queer but feel not adequately represented in metaverses, are totally real. They are not any less real or any less political because they are in metaverses. The same is true for social justice issues: Will metaverses empower everyone equally, and who will benefit from metaverses? Problems of justice and inequality are as real in metaverses as they are outside of it, and the inside and the outside are very much connected. Metaverses are part of political reality and will co-constitute that political reality. This is already happening in current digital social media and games, and will be continued in metaverses.

Metacapitalism

Second, considering those social media and issues concerning justice and (in)equality, it is likely that there will be censorship and policing in the brave new world of metaverses. Some people define the rules of the new worlds. This is not only true in in a technical sense, as when (Søraker, 2011 compares the programmer with God (this is later repeated by Chalmers, see Thornhill, 2022). It is also true in a political sense, for example when it comes to the rules used by algorithmic and human content moderation and to the question who labors for metaverses and who benefits from them. Depending on the way it is designed, there are many ways in which metaverses can lead to, or support, existing power inequalities and raise questions regarding social justice, capitalism, colonialism, and so on. Utopia may thus easily become dystopia. As MacDonald (2022) writes in The Guardian: ‘The tech world has been overtaken by the seductive idea of a virtual utopia, but what’s on offer looks more like a late-capitalist technocratic nightmare’. Just as the current internet and media can and have been be analyzed in terms of their political economy (Fuchs, 2021) and link to capitalism (Zuboff, 2019), the political economy of metaverses also stands in need of such an analysis. Given that current visions of metaverses come from big tech, it would not be far-fetched to expect similar issues; we could discuss what what we may call “metacapitalism” (not so much capitalism “in” “the” metaverses but rather the wider system in which its technologies and narratives are embedded) might do to labor relations and social relations, and how it might enable new forms of manipulation, exploitation, and de-emancipation. Furthermore, the metaverse visions can also be compared to Elon Musk’s vision of going to Mars: technocapitalism always looks for new frontiers since it needs new resources and new markets. Musk’s neocolonialist language of ‘the next frontier’ returns in how Zuckerberg presents his metaverse. Always going beyond. But over whose bodies and for whose benefit? McStay (2023) has rightly argued, the public good and the commons are missing in current metaverse ambitions. And what if we have great virtual worlds but we lose the earth? There is no planet B, and metaverses do not offer one. Again, the metaverse visions are political and very real, so real that they might threaten the reality of the ecosystems on which we depend.

Environmental and climate impact

Third, this leads me to an important issue in the light of the current climate crisis and environmental crisis: more needs to be said about the politics of metaverses consumption and the environmental costs of metaverses. Metaverses can be constructed as an utopian green idea: it promises consumption without production, and thereby without environmental costs – or so it seems. But the reality is that behind the metaverses, like behind all digital technologies, there are still energy costs, environmental costs, and climate costs. As Crawford (2021) has argued, AI is not just about algorithms but also about a supply chain that has problematic consequences for the planet. AI has significant environmental costs and is therefore not necessarily good for the planet (Brevini, 2022). The same can be said about metaverses: they have very real planetary costs. Consider energy use (the computing power and the cloud services needed) but also production of hardware. What Robbins and Van Wynsberghe (2022) say about AI can also be said about metaverses: it is not only a technology but also risks to become an environmentally problematic, unsustainable infrastructure. Just as for AI (Van Wynsberghe, 2021), it is important to not limit the sustainability analysis to a particular (use of) the technology, but instead consider the sustainability of the entire sociotechnical system of metaverses. Metaverses might be called “virtual”, but there are very real (causal) relations between, on the one hand, the technological environment and its operations and workings and, on the other hand, real environmental consequences, which may take place elsewhere. Consider for instance carbon emissions as a result of energy production necessary for metaverses and the related data centers, or the dumping and processing of toxic e-waste, which does not only impact the non-human environment but also for instance people in the Global South (Okafor-Yarwood and Adewumi. 2022).

This is a good argument to consider a non-dualist view, whether naturalist or otherwise. The consequences for the environment and for people, and indeed the actions that lead to these consequences, are all real. Politics that try to keep these realities disconnected are harmful to humans and their environment, and deny the ontological unity of the world. (Another, more “transcendental” way to connect back to ontology and in line with Blok’s (2019) claim that the earth is an ontological condition for our being-in-the-world, would be to argue that metaverses and their narratives, by hiding the earth and the related materialities, also deny the ontological condition for humanity’s existence. However, I will not further develop this direction here.)

Moreover, the current metaverse visions still embody the consumerist idea that ‘stuff will make you happy’, as MacDonald (2022) puts it: it supports the idea that we need objects like houses, that we need money, and that these make us happy and make our life meaningful. This idea that the good life is a consumerist life has led not only to unhappy lives but also to an increasingly unsustainable economy and planet. And again, that is real unhappiness and a very real environmental and climate problem.

Metacapitalism’s utopian metaverse dream thus has consequences that are politically and environmentally problematic. And since metaverses would operate globally and depend on globally distributed infrastructure, these consequences are also global. The reality of metaverses is political, global, and always environmentally relevant.

Conclusion

After analyzing a number of ways in which the ontology of metaverses can be conceptualized, I have shown that normative problems raised by metaverses can more helpfully and adequately be addressed by considering metaverses as fully real, rather than as virtual worlds divorced from reality, and as entangled with the way we perceive and think about the world. In particular, I have argued that this non-dualist and critical-philosophical approach enables us to take seriously, analyze, and discuss, political issues raised by metaverses, including issues related to bodies and identity, capitalism and colonialism, and the environmental and planetary costs.

More work is needed to show how precisely metaverses may shape how we see the world (and vice versa) and to further discuss specific political issues guided by the proposed political ontology approach. That work is urgent. The dreams are materializing. As several commentators put it: there is a sense in which metaverses are already here. Many people already spend a lot of time in highly realistic 3D game worlds (Kessler, 2021). More fundamentally, given our intense use of digital technologies in general, we are already living in metaverses to some extent. Our reality, our experience of reality, and our thinking about reality are already changing. If we fail to recognize their political reality now and do not help to shape their future, before they are fully developed, metaverses will become like the internet technologies and web media that preceded them and on which they rely: worlds, horizons, and stories that are no longer critically questioned but that nevertheless deeply influence our lives and society and that, firmly embedded in technocapitalism, increasingly escape democratic control and have very real global consequences for people, environment, and climate. We can do better, really.