overcome these difficulties
to reach the other side of the Metaverse
◎Zuo Pengfei
The "cosmology" of the metaverse ②
Under the blessing of a large number of algorithms, the new visual scene generated by the metaverse will make more people immersed in the virtual world and unable to extricate themselves.
How to maintain the positive interaction between the real world and the metaverse, play the positive role of the metaverse, suppress the negative role, and properly solve the problem of digital addiction in the future is a major challenge that the metaverse will face in the future.
Since the beginning of this year, topics related to the metaverse have continued to maintain a high level of popularity.
Digital technology giants at home and abroad are accelerating the layout of Metaverse in the core industries such as hardware, software, systems, and applications; local governments have further improved their expectations for the future of the Metaverse industry. Shanghai, Zhejiang, Wuhan, Hefei and other provinces and cities have put Metaverse Incorporated into the future industrial development system.
So, what difficulties will the metaverse, which currently has a good development trend, encounter in the process of landing?
What challenges will we face in the future, and how to solve them?
Five bottlenecks that the "Mengxin" Metaverse needs to break through
As an emerging industry, the development of the Metaverse can be divided into three stages: germination, growth, and maturity.
From the perspective of development status, Metaverse is currently in its infancy, the industrial foundation is relatively weak, and there is still a big gap between mature applications.
In the embryonic stage, in addition to technical constraints, there are still many practical bottlenecks that need to be overcome in the implementation of the metaverse scene.
First, the design of the basic framework of the metaverse.
The normal operation of the economic and social system requires a series of rules and institutions to support it.
Metaverse is a digital scenario simulation of the real economy and society, which will be presented to users in a more vivid, specific and vivid way, which will involve the selection and establishment of a series of basic frameworks such as system design, legal norms, and cultural customs.
For example, there are various urban styles in reality, and which country or region’s urban style is adopted for the city image in the metaverse, whether the selected style is appropriate, and whether users can accept it, it is easy to cause controversy.
Second, data security and privacy protection issues.
In recent years, with the increasingly severe global data security situation, increasing data security governance has become a common choice for all countries.
The metaverse scene needs to meet the higher needs of individuals for intelligent perception, so the collection scale of personal work and life-related data will increase exponentially, and this process will involve a lot of personal privacy and information.
In the current context of stricter data regulation, the collection and use of metaverse-related data will also face more restrictions.
Third, the problem of facilitation of application entry.
At present, the main application scenarios of Metaverse are mostly display, and there are relatively few application scenarios of human-computer interaction and human-human interaction. The main reason is that the application entrance of Metaverse is still immature and inconvenient.
Combining the user's experience needs and the enterprise's visualization function display requirements, the main application entrance of the future Metaverse will be virtual images or virtual people.
In other words, in the future in the metaverse, what we click on is not an app, but an avatar.
However, the development and design of avatar applications are still in their infancy, resulting in the lack of effective solutions to the basic entry problem of metaverse applications.
Fourth, the problem of effective application on the production side.
Because the Metaverse has significant dynamic visualization features, and technologies such as digital twins and mixed reality have deep application prospects in the industry chain, the industry's expectations for future applications of the Metaverse are more on the production side, especially in the manufacturing field.
However, the current Metaverse is mainly used in entertainment, games and other fields. It lacks the entry point and focus of deep integration with the production field, and it is still unable to form a demonstration and benchmarking application on the production side.
Fifth, the energy supply of the metaverse.
At present, the pace of green transformation of the global economy is accelerating. Now and in the future, the shortage of energy supply is likely to intensify.
As a large-scale connected virtual reality application scenario, the smooth operation of the Metaverse is inseparable from the support of new infrastructures such as data centers, computing power centers, network equipment, and communication base stations, and the operation of these infrastructures requires a larger energy supply .
The contradiction between energy supply and demand may become more prominent during the construction of the Metaverse.
Three challenges the mature metaverse may face
Benefiting from favorable factors such as user scale, policy support, and innovation experience, my country's Metaverse industry is expected to accelerate its expansion and extension in many fields in the future, and reshape the traditional industrial system in a visual revolution.
When the metaverse enters a stable and mature period, its development will also face more new challenges, which mainly include the following three aspects.
One is the problem of the metaverse infrastructure being attacked.
In the future, the metaverse will evolve into a complex system that is ultra-large-scale, extremely open, and dynamically optimized. This system will be jointly supported by a huge digital infrastructure and traditional infrastructure.
At the same time, since the metaverse will be more deeply integrated into people's daily work and life than the Internet, if the infrastructure related to the metaverse is attacked, invaded, interfered and destroyed, it will have a serious impact on normal economic and social development.
The second is the problem of high monopoly.
A mature Metaverse system needs to realize the connection and interaction of ultra-large-scale users, the docking and unification of massive standards and specifications, and the operation of large-scale infrastructure. Therefore, the early construction process requires powerful enterprises to invest huge manpower and material resources, which also Caused the metaverse to have an inherent monopoly gene.
At the same time, the mature operation of Metaverse also requires relatively stable service providers.
Therefore, how to avoid the formation of a high degree of monopoly will be a very important topic in the future development of the Metaverse industry.
The third is digital addiction.
With the in-depth development of the metaverse, its "double-edged sword" feature will become more prominent.
On the positive side, the metaverse will break the physical rules of the real world that people are accustomed to, redefine most of the production and lifestyles in the virtual world, and have a significant impact on three different levels: macro-society, meso-industry and micro-individuals. Improve the production efficiency of the whole society with new production methods and cooperation methods.
However, on the negative side, with the blessing of a large number of algorithms, the new visual scenes generated by the Metaverse will make more people immersed in the virtual world and unable to extricate themselves.
How to maintain the positive interaction between the real world and the metaverse, play the positive role of the metaverse, suppress the negative role, and properly solve the problem of digital addiction in the future is also a major challenge that the metaverse will face in the future.
The development of the metaverse should be planned in advance from four aspects
The Metaverse carries the extension and expansion of the real world. With the deepening of its understanding, enterprises and users will have clearer goals and expectations for the future application scenarios of the Metaverse.
In order to solve the realistic bottleneck of the current metaverse development, better cope with the risks and challenges of the future metaverse, and promote the healthy and orderly development of my country's metaverse industry, we should start from the following four aspects:
First of all, grasp the rules and actively guide.
The metaverse industry is currently in its infancy, but its development prospects are huge.
On the one hand, the Metaverse industry model is not yet mature, the industrial pattern has not yet been formed, and the space for industrial innovation is huge; on the other hand, the Metaverse has huge application prospects in the fields of social governance and public services.
Therefore, it is necessary to respect the law of development of emerging industries, actively guide relevant enterprises in the Metaverse field to focus on technological innovation, steadily improve technological maturity, encourage relevant enterprises to actively fulfill corresponding social responsibilities while pursuing business goals, and promote enterprises to establish and improve compliance management systems .
Second, scientific supervision and promotion of self-discipline.
Adhering to scientific supervision can better promote the development of the Metaverse.
On the one hand, we should adhere to both regulatory norms and promotion of development, study and solve the outstanding problems faced by the Metaverse industry during development, and promote the formation of industry self-discipline by Metaverse enterprises in the norm; Supervision requires extensive use of new technological means such as blockchain, big data, and artificial intelligence. Relevant supervisory departments must keep pace with the times to promote the upgrading of traditional supervisory means and methods, and continuously enhance the technological and intelligent level of supervision.
Once again, the standard first, the ecological force.
The construction and development of the Metaverse requires the realization of ultra-large-scale connections, which requires supporting a series of standards and protocols in terms of data, interfaces, platforms, codes, etc., in order to promote the realization of the large-scale connection of different ecosystems of the Metaverse.
Therefore, it is necessary to encourage enterprises and scientific research units to speed up the development of standards, strengthen the construction of the ecological system by constructing standards and norms in advance, and promote the Metaverse industry to enter the "fast lane" of development.
Finally, perfect norms and forward-looking legislation.
With the continuous expansion of the application scenarios and scope of the Metaverse, various types of problems may emerge in an endless stream in the future. Only under the protection of the law can the Metaverse industry grow and operate smoothly.
Therefore, on the premise of ensuring the innovation vitality of the Metaverse, it is necessary to follow up and improve the laws and regulations on data, algorithms, platforms, etc. in a timely manner, strengthen forward-looking scientific legislation, and think in advance how to prevent and solve the laws that may arise from the development of the Metaverse. problem.
(The author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Quantitative and Technological Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)