Smart Social Memory as a Productive Force of the Metaverse

Abstract

This article presents a philosophical analysis of smart social memory as an ontotechnical force shaping subjecthood and reality within the digital environment of the metaverse. In this context, memory loses its classical role as a repository of fixed past events. Instead, a new form of temporality emerges, where the past is constituted through the digital actualization of the present. The algorithmic nature of the digital environment renders the past multiple, editable and fluid, indicating a shift towards a retroactive ontology in which being is defined not by chronology but by digital representation. The concepts of digital, social, and smart social memory are differentiated. Smart social memory is conceived as a hybrid structure that merges algorithmic control with social and cultural orientation. It functions as an actor creating new subjecthood and exercising distributed power by regulating access to the past and determining its ontological relevance. Operating as a digital archon, smart social memory curates what is preserved or erased from collective perception. The authors propose the following thesis: “To be is to be registered in memory”. By integrating algorithmic processing, collective representation and personal experience, smart memory constitutes an ontological stage where subject recognition and actualization occur. The digital self exists as long as its data fragments remain accessible and reproducible; deletion – whether by user intent or algorithmic decision - becomes an act of forgetting. The article underscores the need for a critical approach to digital technologies, emphasizing the emotional and corporeal dimensions of experience that elude archiving, essential for maintaining existential integrity in a digitally saturated world.