Meta-Surveillance in the Digital Enclosure

This article revisits the concept of the “digital enclosure” in the context of recent developments in augmented and virtual reality. It develops the notion of the “recession of the social” to consider how the platforming of a growing range of activities envisioned by the metaverse enables the governance of virtual environments in ways that foster the suppression and misrecognition of irreducible forms of societal interdependence. In so doing, it develops some additional concepts including that of “granular biopower,” which relies on the personalized and targeted modulation of shared space. It also considers the implications of an emerging “AI divide” between those who wield automated decision systems and those who are subject to them.