First I need to clarify that I am talking about the threat to our souls - or, the threat to our salvation; and that I am talking here about material means to the end of spiritual corruption.
And the main answer to this question is (in three words) The Transhumanist Agenda. In other words, the agenda working (by steps) towards a centralised system of complete technological observation, monitoring and control.
I am talking about the embrace and celebration of that vast and interconnected network of personal electronic communication devices from mobile/ especially smart phones, navigation devices, tablets, e-books, credit cards, smart TVs, ear pieces, the Internet of Things... the whole lot. Moving onto smart spectacles, and more-or-less implanted electronic and computational devices. And adding in the bio-manipulations - psychoactive drugs, potntially genetic engineering, modification of human bodies and brains etc...
This is not generally understood to be the worst problem or threat to Mankind; in fact this is (to a large extent) exactly what many people most want - which is exactly why it is the worst problem (as a problem it is invisible, denied, ridiculed).
The reason people want these things is because they are regarded as tools that are 'enhancements'. The danger is that the can be, and are being, used not as tools or enhancements but as personal-monitoring, reality-filtering, and ideological propaganda.
People already live (mostly) inside the mass media, which edits and structures their reality - and they seem to like it, to prefer this to real life. But even if they don't like it, even if it makes them feel bad - they are anyway addicted to it, and increasingly unaware of reality outside of the mass media/ officially approved persepctive.
http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk
And this is the real and present danger.
There is, in our culture, a deep and visceral desire for magic; and this desire is a good and valuable compensation and yearning - however it is often perverted to a desire for 'super powers' that can be used the better to 'get what you want' - and this is probably why The Establishmet allows and indeed supports an infrastructure of Fantasy in TV, movies and fiction - and why so much of this is channelled through 'cool' Special Effects.
These inculcate passive, literalistic, wish-fulfillment fantasies that are connected (implicitly and explicitly) with the technological advances of the Transhumanist agenda. 'You too' can (first in imagination, later in actuality?) become an X-Man by genetic engineering; or get Bat/ Spiderman enhancements by novel technologies; or experience the spectacular other-worlds of Star Wars/ Trek...
At the minimum - the promise is of a 'virtual' reality in which these things will seem completely-real; which amounts to handing-over the entirely of our perceived reality to... whoever controls the virtual reality media; and serving whatever agenda they choose to implement.
Do people trust the mass media, big business and bureaucracy? At one level they don't; but they have been induced to ignore their legitimate mistrust by their greed for gratification here and now; by the hope or promise of a personalised virtual reality that can and will provide full control over their own perceptual world; and even (via drugs and genetic manipulations) control over their own emotional responses (unlimited and unconfined sex, adventure, power).
To agree to live in virtual reality would be a one way ticket to a world in which Men would be very-completely manipulated. Men would still be 'free' in their souls - but they may live a life when they were almost never aware of the soul's existence; and where they may be induced to doubt the reality of their true selves.
Hence the Tower of Babel comparison.
If it gets to the point where the virtual world is an incipient reality; then that would (I guess) be the point at which God would intervene to destroy any society which was on the verge of implementing it. Because God would surely not sustain (for Satan's benefit) a world in which the probability of chosen self-damnation for so many people (especially those brought up in it from childhood) was so very high.
In sum; my belief is that if we do not voluntarily reject the promise of a virtual world of total perceptual control; then we will - for our own good - have even the possibility eliminated. At the cost of vast destruction, I presume.
And, so pervasive and embedded in modernity are the trends towards Transhumanism; that to reject the virtual world entails a radical re-conceptualisation of the human condition: a spiritual awakening as I term it
Non-negotiably so.
