Website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission: Pay close attention to how the metaverse rewrites human social life

Source: Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and National Supervisory Commission website

Author: Guan Xiaopu, Li Yunshu

The year 2021, which is about to pass, is called the first year of the metaverse.

From being able to surf the Internet using a wired computer network to being able to access the Internet anytime, anywhere using smart devices such as mobile phones and tablets, the impact of the mobile Internet era is still fresh in people's memory. At present, although the concept of the successor "metaverse" has not yet been clarified, it cannot stop it from becoming the focus of attention from all parties.

What exactly is the metaverse? What is its background and main characteristics? What changes will it bring to people's social life? How to correctly understand the opportunities and risks in it and create a good ecological environment for the development of the industry? The reporter interviewed relevant experts on this.

There is no single technology called "Metaverse" in the world. Metaverse is a combination and upgrade of various existing technologies. It can be understood as "3D version of the Internet"

In the eyes of a thousand people, there are a thousand metauniverses.

The imagination of the metaverse began with the science fiction novel Snow Crash, published in 1992. The book describes a virtual world called Metaverse, where people can enter as virtual "avatars" through a public entrance and start a different life from the real world. In recent years, with the advancement of global science and technology, the connotation and extension of the metaverse have continued to evolve.

The movie "Ready Player One" released in 2018 is considered to present the metaverse form that best fits the imagination of today's human beings. In the movie, the male protagonist puts on a VR helmet and enters another extremely realistic virtual game world - "Oasis". Pictured is the poster of "Ready Player One".

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, believes that “the Metaverse is a vision that spans many companies and even the entire technology industry. You can think of it as the successor to the mobile Internet.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes that “the real world and the Metaverse are connected.”

Generally speaking, the metaverse is a virtual world that is based on the Internet, interconnected with the real world, and exists in parallel. It is a virtual space that can reflect the real world and is independent of the real world. It is not a closed universe dominated by one company, but a digital universe that is constantly colliding and expanding, composed of countless virtual worlds and digital content. "We believe that the development direction of the metaverse should be an Internet form that is 100% permeable and used 24 hours a day." Kong Rong, chief analyst of global technology at Tianfeng Securities, said that the metaverse can be understood as a "3D version of the Internet", that is, an immersive experience is obtained through a 3D representation of the Internet that makes it concrete.

"Combining various concepts, the metaverse is a new type of Internet application and social form that integrates the virtual and the real by integrating multiple new technologies." Shen Yang, executive director of the New Media Research Center of Tsinghua University, believes that the metaverse will closely integrate the virtual world and the real world in economic systems, social systems, and identity systems, and allow each user to produce content and edit the world.

Shen Yang told reporters that there is no single technology called "metaverse" in the world. Metaverse is a combination and upgrade of various existing technologies. In his opinion, there are three core technologies in metaverse, namely extended reality technology, digital twin technology and blockchain technology, which may have explosive and exponential growth in the future.

For example, extended reality technology provides an immersive experience through VR and AR, which can solve problems that mobile phones cannot solve. Digital twin technology can mirror the real world into the virtual world, which means that in the metaverse, people can see their virtual avatars. As the metaverse develops further, the simulation of the entire real society will be strengthened. After building an economic system with blockchain technology, people may not only spend money in the metaverse, but also make money.

"As an emerging thing, the metaverse is still a concept that is constantly developing and evolving, and different participants are constantly enriching its meaning in their own ways," said Shenyang.

Multiple factors have driven the Metaverse from a concept to a popular one, which can bring development opportunities for the combination of games and social networking, retail and e-commerce, industrial Internet, etc.

Although the concept has been around for a long time, it was not until this year that the Metaverse really “went viral”. In March this year, Roblox, known as the first Metaverse stock, was officially listed in New York, USA; in October, the US social media giant Facebook announced that it would change its name to “Meta”; recently, well-known domestic and foreign companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Tencent, Huawei, and Adidas have either entered the related industry in a high-profile manner or quietly laid out related industries.

It can be said that the Metaverse wave has swept the world, and both traditional industries and technology giants have shown a strong interest in becoming the "number one player". In essence, the Metaverse is not an academic concept, but is driven by all aspects of the industry and investment community.

In October this year, the American social media giant Facebook announced that it would change its name to "Meta" to focus on the metaverse. The picture shows people taking pictures in front of the "Meta" sign in the San Francisco Bay Area of ​​the United States. (Photo source: Xinhua News Agency)

There is no doubt that this year is the year when the Metaverse goes from concept to popularity. The reasons behind this are worth pondering.

"2020 is a critical point in virtualization in human history. Affected by the new coronavirus epidemic, people's lives have undergone tremendous changes." Shen Yang analyzed that on the one hand, the epidemic has accelerated the virtualization of society, and under the epidemic prevention and control measures, the "home economy" has developed rapidly; on the other hand, online life has changed from a short-term exception to the norm, making more demands that cannot be achieved in the real society turned to online methods to meet them.

Specifically, the epidemic has forced the elderly to go online, and people who were away from the Internet have moved online; in daily work, people are more accustomed to using online conference software to hold meetings and discuss business; with basic water, electricity and gas guarantees, the popularity of home appliance merchants, and sufficient supply of Internet information, the epidemic is promoting the "virtual survival of otakus and housegirls"... These changes have paved the way for 2021 to become the first year of the metaverse.

Kong Rong also listed two reasons: first, the global Internet penetration rate has reached a relatively high level, the user dividend is gradually lost, and users have deeper and richer demands for a more immersive virtual world; second, key technologies such as VR/AR hardware, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and cloud computing are gradually developing and iterating.

"For example, suppose we come back from a trip to Huangshan. If my family wants to know whether Huangshan is fun, they can only see photos and videos on their mobile phones at most. If it is the metaverse era, I can share my location and space, including all three-dimensional objects in the space, with him. He can immediately enter this space through the corresponding equipment and get the same feeling as me. Immersive experiences based on extended reality like this will naturally be popular," said Shenyang.

In theory, we can replicate everything offline online, which is the ultimate state of the metaverse. From the current perspective, the following areas are more likely to be digitized and deserve everyone's attention.

The first scenario is the combination of games and social networking, which may give birth to the next generation of TikTok or WeChat. The current social platforms are 2D social, mostly transmitting text and picture information, but when we go out with friends, whether it is eating, watching movies, or watching concerts, in addition to the content itself, it is also a form of social interaction. Especially under the epidemic, isolation makes offline interaction difficult, and virtual social platforms have a strong user demand.

The second scenario is retail and e-commerce. Our current shopping is more about browsing Taobao, Douyin, and "seeking new things" through Xiaohongshu. During the shopping process, most of the pictures and videos are in the form of pictures and videos, without a 3D sense. In the future, a new form of e-commerce may emerge due to the metaverse, replicating offline blocks online, allowing users to feel like they are shopping in real blocks, walking to different stores, and choosing products with the help of virtual salesmen.

Metaverse also has strong application scenarios in the industrial Internet. In early 2021, BMW and NVIDIA's Omniverse platform cooperated to build a digital factory, using digital twin technology to achieve online testing, improving the accuracy and efficiency of the planning process, and increasing the efficiency of the planning stage by about 30%. In the vehicle manufacturing stage, one car is produced every 56 seconds. In August 2021, Tesla engineers also demonstrated how to build digital scenes, simulate real camera data, and let artificial intelligence perform simulation tests and fitting in them.

"Therefore, don't narrowly understand the Metaverse as a social gaming platform. If it can make our real world more 3D and three-dimensional, efficiency will be greatly improved, bringing people closer together." Kong Rong said that the ultimate immersive interactive experience can bring people an experience far beyond the 2D era. The iteration of life, industry, society, and technology will greatly improve efficiency, and labor costs, resource costs, time costs, transaction costs, etc. are also expected to be reduced.

We should be rational about the new round of technological revolution and its impact on society brought about by the Metaverse. We should not underestimate the opportunities in 5-10 years, nor overestimate the evolutionary changes in 1-2 years.

As the topic of the Metaverse becomes more popular, some tricks to "money-making" by using related concepts have emerged one after another. As of mid-November, my country has applied for more than 4,300 Metaverse trademarks, involving nearly 700 companies, of which 99.9% of the trademarks were registered this year.

In March 2021, Roblox, known as the "first stock in the metaverse", was officially listed in New York, USA. Roblox is a platform that integrates game creation and large-scale community interaction. Players can chat, interact and create with friends through games. The picture shows the Roblox game poster. (Picture source: Roblox official website)

Many industry insiders believe that although the Metaverse points the way for the future of the Internet industry, there is also a huge bubble in the Metaverse.

The integration of virtual and real has become a major trend in the development of the Internet, but the Metaverse industry is still in its early stages of development and is still a long way from large-scale productization. It is no secret that the Metaverse industry has the characteristics of immaturity and instability of emerging industries, and there are still some potential risks. In Shenyang's view, the conceptual layout of the Metaverse is still concentrated in the fields of extended reality and game social networking. The technology ecology and content ecology are not yet mature, and the scene entrance needs to be broadened. There is still a long "de-bubble" process between ideal vision and actual development.

Shenyang listed the following risks to reporters: capital manipulation. There are still many uncertainties in the embryonic stage of the Metaverse. Both the industry and the market need to return to rationality. We should be wary of capital's profit-seeking inertia operations such as creating new concepts, hyping new outlets, and attracting new investments; public opinion hype. At present, the Metaverse industry is still in the foundation stage of "social + game" scene applications, and is far from achieving the ideal state of full industry coverage and ecological openness, economic self-consistency, and virtual and real intercommunication. We should be wary of irrational public opinion bubbles that bring irrational stock market fluctuations; economic risks. The Metaverse also provides a more hidden manipulation space for the financial harvesting behavior of giant capital to a certain extent. Financial supervision needs to be expanded from the real world to the virtual world. In addition, the Metaverse also has risks to varying degrees in terms of ethics, monopoly, computing power, privacy, addiction, and knowledge production areas.

Kong Rong believes that we should rationally view the new round of technological revolution and its impact on society brought by the Metaverse. The existing market's doubts about the Metaverse mainly come from the fact that the hardware conditions and network environment for the realization of the technology are not yet mature and matched. The key technologies for building the ultimate Metaverse, such as computing power, platform, and network construction, still need a long time to be perfected.

At present, the concept of metaverse hyped by some companies is quite different from the real metaverse, and we need to distinguish the true from the false and make careful judgments. In the industry's view, the metaverse will be the goal of the next generation of Internet development for a long time, which depends on the core technology breakthroughs, technological evolution and changes in the underlying technology and computing power.