What is the meta-universe of the recent fire?
To be precise, the meta universe is not a new concept, it is more like the rebirth of a classic concept.
In 1992, the famous American science fiction master Neil Stephenson described the metaverse in his novel "Avalanche" as follows: "Put on headphones and eyepieces, find the connection terminal, and you can enter the computer simulation and real world in the form of a virtual clone. Parallel virtual space."
In March of this year, Roblox, the first stock of Meta Universe Concept, was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange; in May, Facebook stated that it would transform into a Meta Universe company within 5 years; in August, Bytedance spent huge sums of money Acquiring the VR startup Pico... This year, Metaverse has undoubtedly become one of the hottest concepts in the technology field.
So, what exactly is the meta universe?
Why are the major digital technology giants entering the meta universe one after another?
How should my country's meta-universe industry be deployed and developed?
There is currently no accepted definition of the meta universe
To be precise, the meta-universe is not a new concept. It is more like the rebirth of a classic concept. It is a concept embodied under new technologies such as extended reality (XR), blockchain, cloud computing, and digital twins.
In 1992, the famous American science fiction master Neil Stephenson described the metaverse in his novel "Avalanche" as follows: "Put on headphones and eyepieces, find the connection terminal, and you can enter the computer simulation and real world in the form of a virtual clone. Parallel virtual space."
Of course, the lack of a recognized definition of core concepts is a common phenomenon in the field of frontier science and technology.
Although the meta universe has attracted attention and expectations from all parties, there is also no universally accepted definition.
Returning to the essence of the concept, it can be considered that the meta-universe is based on the traditional cyberspace, with the maturity of a variety of digital technologies, building and forming a virtual world that is both mirrored and independent of the real world.
At the same time, Metaverse is not a simple virtual space, but includes the network, hardware terminals, and users into a sustainable, wide-covered virtual reality system. The system contains both digital copies of the real world and virtual worlds. Creation.
At present, everything about the metaverse is still under debate, and analysis from different perspectives will lead to extremely different conclusions, but the basic characteristics of the metaverse have been generally recognized by the industry.
Its basic features include: immersive experience, low latency and immersive sense to give users an immersive sensory experience; virtualized avatars, real-world users will have one or more ID identities in the digital world; open creation , Users enter the digital world through the terminal and can use massive resources to carry out creative activities; strong social attributes, the real social relationship chain will be transferred and reorganized in the digital world; stabilize the system, with a safe, stable, and orderly economic operation system.
Favored by technology giants and government departments
Since August, the meta-universe concept has become more popular. Japanese social giant GREE announced that it will launch meta-universe business, NVIDIA’s "digital stand-in" for more than ten seconds at the press conference, and Microsoft announced the corporate meta-universe solution at the Inspire Global Partner Conference. The plan...In fact, not only are the major technology giants vying to lay out the meta-universe track, but the relevant government departments of some countries are also actively participating in it.
On May 18, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Information and Communication of South Korea initiated the establishment of the "Meta Universe Alliance", which includes more than 200 local Korean companies and organizations such as Hyundai, SK Group, and LG Group. The goal is to build a national augmented reality platform. , And provide public virtual services to the society in the future; On July 13, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan released the "Survey Report on the Future Possibilities and Issues of the Virtual Space Industry", which summarized the problems that Japan’s virtual space industry needs to solve urgently. With a view to occupying a dominant position in the global virtual space industry; on August 31, South Korea’s Ministry of Finance released the 2022 budget, planning to spend 20 million US dollars on the development of the Meta universe platform.
Why can Metaverse be favored by technology giants, venture capital companies, start-ups, and even government departments?
From the perspective of enterprises, Metaverse is still in the initial stage of industry development. Whether it is the underlying technology or application scenarios, there is still a big gap compared with the mature form in the future, but this also means
The meta-universe related industries have huge room for expansion.
Therefore, digital technology giants with multiple advantages want to hold onto the market, and start-ups in the digital technology field must make arrangements in advance to gain the opportunity to overtake on corners, or even increase the yuan universe track.
From the government's point of view, Metaverse is not only an important emerging industry, but also an area of social governance that needs attention.
With the rapid development of the meta-universe industry, a series of new problems and challenges will follow.
Matthew Bauer, a senior research expert of Metaverse, puts forward: “Metaverse is a concept at the same level as the mobile Internet.” Using mobile Internet to analogize Metaverse, we can better understand the internal logic of government departments’ attention to it.
The government hopes to participate in the formation and development process of Metaverse in order to forward-looking consideration and resolution of related problems brought about by its development.
Make a forward-looking layout in terms of technology and standards
Meta universe is an extremely open, complex, and huge system. It covers the entire cyberspace and numerous hardware devices and realistic conditions. It is a super-large digital application ecosystem jointly constructed by multiple types of builders.
In order to accelerate the promotion of Metaverse from concept to reality, and to seize the opportunity in the future global competition, my country should make a forward-looking layout in the three aspects of technology, standards, and law.
From a technical point of view, technical limitations are the biggest bottleneck for the current development of Metaverse, and the corresponding underlying technologies such as XR, blockchain, and artificial intelligence are still far from the needs of Metaverse landing applications.
The maturity of the meta-universe industry requires a lot of basic research to support it.
In this regard, to prevent Metaverse from becoming a hype for some companies, relevant companies should be encouraged to strengthen basic research, enhance technological innovation capabilities, and steadily improve the maturity of related industrial technologies.
From the perspective of industry standards, only by defining Metaverse through a series of standards and protocols like the Internet can the great connection of different ecosystems of Metaverse be realized.
In this regard, it is necessary to strengthen the overall planning of Metaverse standards, guide and encourage standardization cooperation between technology giants, support enterprises and institutions in the development of technology, hardware, software, services, content and other industry standards, and actively participate in the formulation of Metaverse’s standards. Global standards.
From a legal perspective, with the development of Metaverse and its gradual maturity, a series of issues such as platform monopoly, tax collection, regulatory review, and data security will also arise. Think ahead of time how to prevent and solve the problems caused by Metaverse. Legal issues have become an indispensable link.
In this regard, legislative work in the field of digital technology should be strengthened, follow up in time in data, algorithms, transactions, etc., and study the related legal systems of Metaverse.
To be sure, under the joint promotion of technological evolution and human needs, the realization of the meta-universe scene and the maturity of the meta-universe industry are only a matter of time.
As an extension and expansion of the real world, the tremendous opportunities and revolutionary effects brought by the metaverse are worth looking forward to, but because of this, we need to rationally look at the current metaverse boom and promote the healthy development of the metaverse industry.
(The author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Quantitative and Technical Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)