(Economic Watch) "Industrial Gold Rush" or "Investment Epidemic"? Three Questions Metaverse
China News Agency, Shanghai, March 12th: "Industrial Gold Rush" or "Investment Epidemic"?
Three Questions Metaverse
China News Agency reporter Zheng Yingying
Metaverse, is it worth being sought after?
A reporter from China News Agency interviewed Zhao Xing, a professor at the Big Data Research Institute of Fudan University and deputy director of the National Intelligence Evaluation and Governance Experimental Base of Fudan University, to answer relevant questions.
One question: Do you want to develop the metaverse?
"After the metaverse (the concept) came out, many people may think that it has an element of hype, and of course it does; but in an industrial sense, I think it is the next generation of the information industry." Zhao Xing said.
He explained that the metaverse was first proposed by Western companies based on the perspective of games and Internet social interaction. Essentially, the Internet economy has entered a bottleneck period of "no way to grow". Therefore, at the beginning, this concept has a certain meaning There is a bit of a speculative element to it.
However, with in-depth understanding, the industry found that the metaverse is not so simple. One of its values lies in its ability to integrate many core technologies of the information industry in the past 10 years, such as 5G, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, VR (virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality) and other technologies "connect the dots into a line" to bring the next generation of the Internet.
In Zhao Xing's view, the scope of the next-generation Internet is still too small, and the greater possibility is that the Metaverse will bring the next-generation information industry, "It can bring many core technologies in the past, but cannot be fully implemented for the time being. Integrate them and find new application scenarios in many vertical fields.”
Second question: Can China produce the first explosive product of Metaverse?
In Zhao Xing's view, the current metaverse industry is very similar to the smartphone industry in 2005.
He said, "In 2005, smartphones were also a flashpoint, and the whole society was hotly discussing that mobile phones would be transformed into smartphones, but there was actually no good smartphone product at that time. At that time, Apple The mobile phone (iPhone) hasn't even been born yet."
In 2007, Apple launched the first-generation iPhone, which completely detonated the smartphone industry.
Zhao Xing believes that the emergence of the first explosive product on the TO C (customer) side of the Metaverse is a very critical time point. This product is likely to be a human-computer interface type hardware, such as a real experience. Sensitive AR glasses, etc.
Can China produce the first explosive product of the Metaverse?
Zhao Xing's view on this issue is "both anticipation and pessimism".
He pointed out that the industry's most promising right now is Apple's app-level AR products.
In addition, there have been recent reports that Apple is developing an AR contact lens that is expected to replace the iPhone in the future.
He believes that China is generally lacking in the relevant core technologies of the metaverse, and is still "stuck" after being "stuck" by the "points" (technologies) connected into "lines".
How to break through?
He believes that in the development of this generation of information industry, the whole country has enough determination and systematic layout to carry out "technical supplementary lessons".
Three Questions: When will the Metaverse be "by your side"?
Zhao Xing's research team has recently noticed that there are already several shopping malls in Shanghai ready to build a comprehensive metaverse business district that combines virtual and real.
He said that in the future, consumers may see different novel scenes every month when they go to the mall, and the shopping guides will be virtual humans or robots, and the concept of commercial complexes will be reshaped.
Similar to smartphones, the Metaverse is expected to change the way people live, work, and more.
In Zhao Xing's view, the interaction between virtual and reality is expected to make working from home the norm, the pattern of commercial land and residential land will change accordingly, the urban traffic load will also be greatly reduced, and the city will be restored to a gathering place for families and communities.
For another example, in the field of education, Metaverse can bring immersive experience to learners, allowing everyone to experience the situation, rather than passively receiving indoctrination.
Especially for some teaching content that was difficult to achieve in the past, such as vocational education, the purchase cost of multi-model machine tools is high, and some operations are special and even dangerous, and experiential operations can be performed through the Metaverse.
However, Zhao Xing also emphasized that although the technology of the Metaverse is very beautiful, the development process is rugged and will bring risks that we cannot imagine. For example, the governance of the Metaverse is one of the problems. In the future, the government will face reality, virtuality, and combination of virtuality and reality. The complex governance situation of three social scenarios.
He believes that the development of the metaverse still needs to be explored by the industry, "The information industry has been like this for the past few decades, always at some critical time points that are both accidental and inevitable, using a concept to make the capital market and the whole society pay attention to and Enter, and then truly implement the industrial upgrade." (End)