When ChatGPT came out, the large model seemed to instantly overshadow the Metaverse. People no longer talked about the Metaverse as they did in the past. Is its silence experiencing a technological iteration or waiting for the next explosion? s arrival?
The Metaverse is a digital world and the vision of the next generation Internet.
It's about technology and more about imagination.
Its construction is similar to that of real society, with infrastructure, community and governance all indispensable.
In the third issue of the micro-documentary "The Thinkers Are Coming", Yang Wei, associate professor of management at China Europe International Business School, and Zhang Wan (CEIBS EMBA 2019), the former head of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Association and Metaverse Special Committee, discuss the "Metaverse" of myths.
The future is here, when the technological revolution turns virtual space into a part of the world, human beings can transcend the five senses and use the life form of digital consciousness to perceive the virtual and the unknown.
By then, everyone will be a "super player."
The following are excerpts from the transcript of the conversation:
The Metaverse is the vision for the next generation of the Internet
Zhang Wan: The topic of the Metaverse was quite popular before. What do you think the Metaverse is?
Yang Wei: In fact, we all said at the beginning that the Metaverse was a concept in Neal Stephenson's novel "Snow Crash". The "Metaverse" in the novel refers to the Metaverse, which is actually a very advanced Internet concept. We Use some particularly advanced equipment to enter a virtual space and interact in this space.
The metaverse we are talking about is the next generation of the Internet. So what will the next generation of the Internet look like?
What will it develop into?
I think this is actually why everyone is so enthusiastic and interested in the concept of the Metaverse.
Furthermore, our current Internet is more of a communication tool, not entirely a social concept.
Maybe in the next generation of the Internet, we will not only have a real physical world, but also a virtual digital world, which will not only allow us to better communicate and even make some economic exchanges.
Zhang Wan: In fact, I understand the metaverse to be more like a large ecosystem. This form is just like what we saw in the movie "Ready Player One" before. It is a concept where virtual and reality can be switched continuously.
If the Metaverse is the form of the next-generation Internet, then my understanding is that it is still in its early stages. Although there are some breakthroughs in various technologies, greater breakthroughs in the complete ecosystem are still needed.
Are AR and VR glasses necessary?
Zhang Wan: Is the metaverse a false proposition?
This is a controversial point outside.
And how do we understand its controllability and interactivity?
Yang Wei: I think this involves another level of imagination in the metaverse.
The large amount of information we transmit and create using Internet technology is actually very valuable, but we have no way to capture it well on the Internet.
This requires an economic form. The Web3, digital currency, and digital collections we are talking about are all attempts in this area. How to establish digital assets and how to exchange digital currencies are actually attempts at new economic forms.
Therefore, the Metaverse is not only a technology, nor is it just an application for a specific scenario, it is more of an exploration of the system, that is, how we create an economic form in the digital world and the virtual world so that we can capture and obtain information assets. the value brought.
Zhang Wan: When we talk about the Metaverse today, hardware devices such as AR and VR are still at the stage where they need more good content and better immersive experiences, which makes people confused about the arrival of the Metaverse world. What do you think of the relationship between AR, VR and the Metaverse?
Yang Wei: I have been thinking about this question for a long time. Do I really need to wear glasses to experience virtual reality?
Zhang Wan: I don’t think I have to wear glasses in the future.
Yang Wei: Yes, I think glasses are just a medium. Interactivity and immersion are personal feelings, which come more from content than form.
If the digital world is developed enough, do we still need the real world?
Zhang Wan: I think the development of the metaverse is hierarchical.
The first level restores the real world to the virtual world 1:1;
The second level is to combine virtuality and reality, whether through VR glasses or other methods. In fact, it is to add some virtual modes to the real world that we cannot experience.
Perhaps in the future, a completely virtual world will appear at the third level, which may not be based on the real world at all.
I feel that it is not technology that limits innovation, but human imagination that determines how to create the future.
Yang Wei: I think what you said is that the first and second levels have many practical cases, such as digital twins, and the third level may be the most potential and the most interesting point, how to create true virtual world.
We can even have our own digital identities and avatars in the virtual world. This is our imagination for the future lifestyle, which I find very interesting.
Zhang Wan: You reminded me of an identity issue. In terms of identity ethics and management, will digital clones cause a lot of trouble?
Yang Wei: This issue is also a hotly debated issue at the moment, which is how to further manage digital identities in the future development of the Internet?
How to protect our privacy while making better use of data?
How to build our system in the future and how to better adapt to the development of productivity?
This is also an issue that our entire society needs to pay attention to.
Zhang Wan: Do you think there will be a completely virtual world in the future?
Yang Wei: This is to answer "If the digital world is developed enough, do we still need the real world?" I think of the movie "Ready Player One". I think it reflects the thinking of how to coordinate the digital and real world. , even worry.
The digital world should be complementary to the real world, rather than putting the cart before the horse. This requires us to maintain a balance in policy and technology. This is also something that needs to be faced during the development of the Metaverse.
The brain-computer interface that Elon Musk is talking about now, I think, is also part of the metaverse, and it is a very imaginative part. In the future, we humans may have more than one form.
The issues we talked about may seem very philosophical, but as a professor in a business school, I think these imaginations are our business prospects. How to combine our own lives, and even self-awareness with technology and science, will have great consequences. great economic potential and business opportunities.
Conclusion:
The three dimensions of metaverse construction
Yang Wei: In summary, the Metaverse is a vision for our next generation Internet.
The construction of the metaverse needs to follow three dimensions: infrastructure, community and governance.
Infrastructure is the same as the infrastructure in real society. We need advanced information transmission technology, such as 5G and 6G communications, so that we can have high-fidelity information transmission and ensure the reality of the "digital world"; secondly, we need to have information storage and processing, such as cloud computing; at the same time, some information exchange platforms are also an indispensable part of our construction of the metaverse infrastructure, such as Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu in the Internet world.
The second dimension in the metaverse is community, or content and application.
For example, games and other interactive entertainment content, or digital twins used to ensure industrial production and train autonomous driving algorithms. Without these content, the infrastructure of the Metaverse would be like an empty city with only houses and no people.
Most of our discussions now focus on the infrastructure level, such as VR and AR, but I think this track will be a competition between giants in the future because it consumes too much funds and supporting assets.
The hardware ecosystem of the Metaverse involves the coordination and cooperation of multiple industries, from upstream communications, chips, cloud computing, to consumer device R&D and production. There is competition and uncertainty in standard unification and compatibility in every link. It’s very big, and we don’t know what form the Metaverse will actually take.
I think that more opportunities currently lie in the second level, which is more friendly to start-ups, because like the current Internet, each community and each application scenario is a relatively unique segmented track. It’s easier to seize opportunities.
Third, I think the more important dimension of the metaverse is the construction of institutions.
When we carry out value creation activities in a virtual digital world, we need institutional guarantees.
For example, the exploration of virtual socio-economic systems can allow the value of digital assets to be better perceived, measured, captured and distributed.
In order for the Metaverse to achieve an interactive experience technically, it needs to be able to create a "sense of trust." Although communication technology is now developed, we are still willing to talk about many complex or important things in person, because face-to-face trust is a modern technology What cannot be reproduced is also a challenge facing the current development of the Metaverse.
In the long future, or in the future that does not need to be very long, if no one talks about the metaverse anymore, it is probably not because the concept has become cold, but because we are truly living in the era of the "metaverse".
Just like now, no one will talk about "information highway" or "mobile Internet" anymore, because as long as you open your mobile phone and WeChat, these technical concepts have already been integrated into every moment of our lives, bit by bit.
We will truly embrace a new social form, and then we may face a richer and more diverse world.
(over)
Editor in charge: [Liu Pai]