Guangming Daily Commentary | Stay Calm in the Face of the Metaverse Craze

Author: Wang Mingji, Associate Researcher at the China Macroeconomic Research Institute

Source: Guangming Daily

Overnight, the Metaverse became popular. The fact that "Metaverse" is listed in the "Top Ten Internet Terms of 2021" recently released is a clear proof. The shock wave of the Metaverse on the technology circle began on March 10 when the gaming platform Roblox first wrote this concept into its prospectus. Its market value exceeded US$40 billion on the first day of listing on the New York Stock Exchange, triggering the Metaverse phenomenon. Some studies predict that the market size of the Metaverse will reach US$800 billion in 2024.

The concept of Metaverse first appeared in Neal Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. According to the Metaverse Development Research Report 2020-2021, Metaverse is a new type of Internet application and social form that integrates multiple new technologies and integrates the real and the virtual. In other words, Metaverse is a bit like an enhanced version of virtual reality. People use wearable devices such as brain-computer interfaces and VR (virtual reality) to enter the data world of immersive experience. Through a 3D avatar representing themselves, they can work, party, watch concerts, and watch movies in Metaverse, and experience a second life in the era of holographic platforms.

The emergence of the Metaverse will integrate and promote technological innovation, and ultimately achieve a deep integration of the virtual world and the real world. At present, new technologies such as big data, cloud computing, blockchain, VR, and AR (augmented reality) are always in a state of "going their own way", making it difficult to play an integrated role. The Metaverse should not only provide users with a more realistic experience, but also integrate the achievements of information revolution (5G/6G), Internet revolution (Web3.0), artificial intelligence revolution, and virtual reality technologies such as VR, AR, and MR (mixed reality) to build a parallel holographic digital world and achieve a deep connection between the physical world and the virtual world. To successfully build such a complex virtual world, six supporting technologies are needed, including interactive technology, blockchain technology, Internet of Things technology, artificial intelligence technology, network and computing technology, and electronic game technology.

Therefore, the popularity of the Metaverse concept is based on people’s high confidence in technology iteration. Although many technologies are not mature at present, and are even some distance away from the conception of the Metaverse, judging from the market attention and capital chasing caused by the Metaverse in 2021, the integrated application of new technologies will be promoted soon, and the application scenarios and user experience will be further enriched and improved.

The emergence of the Metaverse will change the way people understand the world and lead to profound changes in their lifestyles. If the Metaverse ignited the enthusiasm of the technology circle because of the power of technological innovation, then the success of the Metaverse in attracting the attention of the whole society is due to the fact that once the scenes depicted by the Metaverse are realized, they will change everyone's life.

In the past, whether it was traditional paper media or new Internet media, people obtained information in a two-dimensional way. However, the metaverse will make people feel "immersive" and re-understand and view the world in a three-dimensional and multi-dimensional way. The massive amount of information in the online world enters the subjective world in a more intuitive way, greatly expanding people's consciousness; at the same time, virtual people are also forming new social relationships and emotional connections, and feeding back their own thinking and emotional experiences gained in the virtual space to the real world. The real-time interaction between reality and virtuality will inevitably lead to breakthroughs and reconstructions in the traditional social science system, and will also promote changes in the research paradigm of natural sciences, such as the interactive integration of information science, quantum science, mathematics and life sciences.

The emergence of the metaverse will trigger an in-depth discussion of the operating rules of the virtual world. In the process of the formation and development of the metaverse, traditional concepts of life, time and space, energy, ethnicity, and economy may be changed or even subverted.

First, the current situation where the rules of the metaverse are determined by the community itself may lead to cultural invasion and value dislocation. When more people enter the metaverse, how should the rules of civilization such as value orientation, system selection and order hierarchy be designed? How to achieve the integration of different cultures in the virtual world? Who will maintain these orders and rules?

Secondly, the virtual world also has the risk of polarization between the rich and the poor. There is no traditional industrial structure in the metaverse, and the "concept economy" will be the basic form of economic activity. The embryonic metaverse economic system can transplant and test all digital economic innovations, such as cooperative economy, sharing economy and inclusive finance. But in the long run, the independent economic system of the metaverse should also be included in the scope of macroeconomic regulation to avoid alternative polarization in the parallel world.

In addition, whether the monopoly, hegemonism and racial conflicts in the real world will infiltrate the metaverse, and whether the price difference of digital avatars based on race, gender and skin color is a sign that they have infiltrated the metaverse, are all questions. This also reminds people that the metaverse, which is jointly created by millions or even hundreds of millions of people through game entertainment, content creation, interpersonal interaction, etc., must establish operating rules for harmonious coexistence.