The Conditions of Permeability: How Shared Cyberworlds Turn into Laboratories of Possible Worlds

Numerous simultaneous paths open in front of the cybernaut, whose person is reflected in the various windows opened on the screen like many fragments of mirror. Yet, the fragmentarity of the online persona does not necessarily imply a disintegration of the self. This paper conducts a philosophical critique of the conditions under which cyberworlds can constitute a psychosocial moratorium virtually always available, where the subject can experience possible realities and dialog with the other within and outside the self. Virtual worlds can afford a condition of semitransparency that could represent an important opportunity to a new relationship between the individual and the community: a third way beyond the objectivation to a communitarian identity of traditional society and the derealization of impersonalism of bureaucratic society.