THE VIRTUALNESS IS IN SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT: SPATIAL MODUS

Problem setting. An identity is formed and develops on a border social and personal
realities, by submitting a soba their contradictory unity the study of that helps social
philosophy to expose the features of life of modern society. For the study of virtuality the
analysis of totality of spatially-judicial descriptions of authentication is needed, that will
allow to overcome the context of her opening out in the conditions of virtualization of
society, when the potential prevails above available. Life is impossible out of time and
space, it has specific spatial descriptions.
Recent research and publications analysis. Despite the growing interest in the study
of the virtual, in modern scientific discourse there is still no unambiguous interpretation
of the term «virtual reality»: it is understood as an artificial environment supported by
computer programming tools (including the Internet and computer simulators), a number
of human mental states ( hypnotic trance, dreams, creative process, etc.), as well as a set
of phenomena associated with the functioning of the media environment (media, digital
economy, etc.). As a result of this posture, the attention of researchers remained the
problems of the influence of spatial parameters of virtuality in the social environment.
Paper objective. The purpose of the article is to consider the features of spatiality
inherent in virtual reality in general, as well as the specifics of cyber-virtuality as a special
manifestation of the virtual in social reality.
Paper main body. Entering the virtual environment involves going through the initial
registration procedure and subsequent identification, a kind of simplified initiation rites,
«initiation» into users. In addition, the user gets the opportunity to identify himself as
Вісник Національного юридичного університету імені Ярослава Мудрого № 1 (48) 2021
«his», acquires a different status than the «guest», which is anonymous, invisible, in many
cases does not have access to information or cannot leave comments. Leaving the Web
returns a person to a state of anonymity, while re-entering leads to individuation and return
to the cyber-virtual microspace, the person’s immediate environment on the Web.
The concept of «virtual ghetto» is considered, which means a space that isolates
subjects within the framework of a virtual social community from other groups through
borrowing patterns of social interaction and through the choice of contexts of selfpresentation
that allow them to best «fit» into their environment.
The Internet is a new space for social practices, a space of boundless, relatively free,
communication, despite the desire to control the processes taking place there by the
authorities. This is a space for free self-expression of a person, a refuge for creative
research, a repository of wisdom, an arena for debate, a work of art that can be valued as
a masterpiece of music, painting or architecture. Here it is possible to create social
movements based on value identities, independent of the so-called flows (informational,
symbolic, monetary, etc.) that regulate social life, set its pace and often contribute to human
alienation in the modern world, in particular, through control over access to the Internet.
Comprehension of the category of virtual space leads to the statement that traditional
spatial oppositions are erased here, and any point in the world can become close and even
central. The cycles of entry and exit from this space set the rhythm of relations within virtual
communities, self-developing intellectual systems, united by a semantic field that is
significant for each of their members.
Conclusions of the research. Relations within virtual communities are determined in
a certain way by the functioning of social fields characterized by a set of norms, the
internalization of which leads to the inclusion of the individual in the field, where he is
endowed with some freedom of action. Human limitation by the framework of the field, his
dependence on the virtual microspace in decision-making, being on the «virtual periphery»
is opposed to absolute freedom, leading, ultimately, to the limitation of the framework of
personal space, fraught with alienation from society, the loss of the need for communication
and society.