“Virtual Reality” and “Virtualization of Culture” as Concepts of Modern Cultural Studies

The article discusses the new concepts of cultural studies: “virtual reality” and “virtualization of culture”. It should be noted that attempts to understand “virtuality” as another existence and to comprehend it were made even in antiquity. In the 1990s, the concepts of “virtual reality”, “cyberspace”, “virtualization of consciousness”, etc. became fashionable trends, so that today it is hard to imagine the socio-cultural sphere without them. The article has three main sections. The first one analy zes theoretical aspects of the study of virtual reality, which is the object of studies of different humanitarian sciences; however, the priority role in the study of cyberspace as a special social and cultural human environment belongs to cultural studies. They actualized the development of media culture as a phenomenon of the information age. In the second section, the object of analysis is the Internet as a “universal space of free communication” (M. Castells). Of all new media, just the Internet can be considered the “key technology” of communicology and communication studies. The communication between the individual and the Internet, its application in all spheres of human activity, caused the emergence of such concept as “Internet culture”. In the third section, the cyberspace is considered as a new social and cultural environment of modern human. Unlike traditional media, the Internet, as an important factor of the culture of the 21st century, is not only a means of storing and transmitting information, but also a universal platform — a space for social and cultural practice and personal creative activity.