Homo-Artefact

Homo-Sapiens apparently loses confidence into his self-proclaimed wisdom and reason (sapiens); at least it would explain his growing efforts to turn himself into a Homo-Artefact and to create a virtual habitat for the same.
Oddly, he structures it like his traditional possession and defence (paranoia) complexes, resembling old fortresses whose outer courts are dedicated to commerce and entertainment, while the inner are for the programming and the administration of this “virtual world”, whose nucleus is reserved for the militaries and the sciences that protect and hide the temples of the ruling class and its god mammon.

Structures like that have been around since millennia and originate from the hope to be able to realize oneself through isolation and fortification – whereby the latter is foremost to protect the possession complex and its spoils, both having grown quite formidable in the realm of Sapiens i.e. the Occidental culture.
And since, like any thief, or beast of prey, he is not going to abandon his booty, he has to find ways to transform it into digital/virtual treasures and to fend off the growing masses of his hungry “third world” victims (second world connotes probably the time/space his rip-off takes) which is going to be complicated, as he still needs them to help him plunder their last resources.

With dividing the planet Earth into a prodigal north, where paranoia and possession complexes are cultivated, and a deprived south whose cultural contributions are mega slums which breed crime and violence, Sapiens sets off a dynamic that will either culminate in the masses of the south overwhelming his northern domains – if so, certainly not in a civilised manner, but more probably like the apocalyptic visions of his science fiction prophets – or the north trying to wipe out the southern problem, which is not going to be pleasant either, considering his ABC weaponry and that his warfare becomes increasingly wicked, cowardly and devastating, not to forget the tendency to try to solve his problems with genocide and mass-murder.
His regular me-culpa-attacks and wallowing in humanisms and self-pities are mere schizophrenia-typical seizures, and as such very short lived.

Aleksandr Solzjenitsyn predicted this after the Sovjeit Union Fell. East/West antagonisms are like nostalgic relics of the past, preventing the truth to be understood and faced.

is it possible to elaborate why isolationism is not possible or likely though?

When the final frontier becomes accessible, man will seed the galaxy with idealized versions of himself.
Some completely detached from his past, others selectively attached, a few in harmony with their past.

Genetic isolation, or a cosmic scale, will begin a new round of speciation..as the cosmos speeds towards its own extinguishment.
Will some find new undiscovered frontiers in dimensional fragmentation? Uncertain....unimaginable for creatures like us - most still trapped in binary semiotics.

My own metaphysics predict new beginnings as space/time expands - space being possibility - new near-absolute singularities emerge as one approached near-absolute chaos: state of multiplying possibilities, veering towards infinity.
Infinity would be defined as a theoretical state where all is equally possible, i.e., uniform possibilities; order being probability, i.e., limited possibilities (predictability, consistency, pattern).
There is no north/south in space. 

We are currently in the in-between near-absolute order (Yin/Yang, Big Bang) moving towards near-absolute-chaos (incomprehensible randomness with no predictable consistency - a counter-intuitive cosmos.
This movement/momentum towards is experienced as linear time.
Neither can or will ever be finalized.

Virtual reality can be an escape, but it cannot detach itself form reality proper - it is contingent upon it.
Virtual man - automaton - must sacrifice self - severing the continuum of his identity - to transfer his selected memories into an artificial representation of an idealized self - this is what it means to lose your soul and your spirit.