动态与观点
He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the metaverse.
——Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
Origins
30 years ago, American science novel author Neal Stephenson presented the "Metaverse" conception in his "Snow Crash".
The novel depicts a three-dimensional digital space that is closely linked to the real world. In this space, users can communicate with each other in the online world, by virtual images made of code.
The metaverse concept was first proposed in “Snow Crash”
Vernor Steffen Vinge, an American mathematician and computer expert, creatively proposed the concept of "brain-computer interface" in his 1981 novel “The Real Name”.
It is well known that humans perceive the world through five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and these so-called senses are just different kinds of electrical signals in the brain.
Theoretically, as long as these senses are stimulated through electrical signals, then the brain can be tricked to create a virtual world. Movies like “The Matrix” and “Ready Player One” have used the concept to make people fantasize about the arrival of the metaverse.
The “Matrix" shows that the computer can control human senses via simulating signals
“Ready Player One” shows us an achievable metaverse world
Beginning
In 2019, COVID-19 pushed the pause button for the world. Affected by the epidemic, people have to stay at home, work, and socialize via the Internet.
Faced with the surging demand market for online office and social networking, Internet technology companies began to explore new ways to work and socialize at home......
It is the variety of literature and film that have imagined and explored the metaverse, coupled with the changes in people's lives and social lives brought about by the COVID-19, people are expecting a new way to work and society that can break the time and distance.
On March 11, 2021, Roblox, the first metaverse stock, was listed on the New York Stock Exchange at a valuation of $45 billion.
And on October 28, social software giant Facebook announced its entry into the metaverse, changing the name of its parent company to "META", and the company's stock code to "MVRS".
Facebook enters the metaverse and changes its name to “META”
What is “Metaverse”
Metaverse is composed of two words, “Meta” and “Universe”. “Meta" is derived from the Greek word, means outside of something, and “Universe” means the world or the world that you are familiar with. "Metaverse" is the "universe" beyond the present. More specifically, the Metaverse is an unreal universe that transcends the real universe.
Imagine a day in the future. You wake up from your home in Suzhou at 7 a.m. 7:30 a.m., you have breakfast under the Pyramids, then go for a run on the beach in Sydney. One hour later, you choose an astronaut suit from thousands of outfits to wear for your morning meeting with your colleagues in the "spaceship". After the morning's work, you decide to release your stress through exercise. So you have a boxing match with an "alien" in the virtual world.
In the afternoon, you start working on a project that requires some vintage design. You travel to medieval Europe with your colleagues who lived in Canadian and visit Baroque architecture. In the evening, you "fly" to the constellation Lyra with your astronomy-inclined son to see Vega, the brightest star in the constellation.
You can achieve not only spatial transformation but also time travel in one day. And all of this happens only in your home. Your colleagues are all working at home through the metaverse. You don't have to endure the daily commute of several hours in big cities and the high price of housing, and your children can also enjoy the high-quality education resources of big cities at home.
In this world, you can set up different appearances for yourself. Being an engineer for working, being a cute animal for a party with friends, being a robot for gaming. In this world, you can be everyone to do everything. You can break the constraints of time and space, shuttle in all different places and times. In this world, you can start your second life, can make friends, entertainment, and even make money to provide for yourself in the real world.
Those scenarios for metaverse life are Meta company's vision of the future Internet.
Basic concept of metauniverse:
Presence
Avatars
Home space
Teleporting
Interoperability
Privacy and Safety
Virtual goods
Natural Interfaces
——Mark Elliot Zuckerberg（Meta CEO）Metaverse Presentation
Capital Support
In March 2021, Roblox was listed on the New York Stock Exchange with more than $30 billion market capitalization. The stock price rose 54% on the day.
The metaverse is regarded as the next generation of mobile Internet. Bloomberg Intelligence expects the metaverse market size will reach $800 billion by 2024, and a large amount of capital is pouring into this new market.
Sources: Internet
Metaverse in China
The trend of metaverse has started not only in foreign countries but also in China.
At present, China's Internet industry has developed to a bottleneck, the scale of users tends to be stable. Thanks to the Chinese government’s strong support for basic Internet technology, metaverse has a natural advantage for development in China.
Source: The Metaverse Passage
Source: www.gov.cn
With the Chinese government’s industry guidance and policy support, Chinese companies have also begun to into the metaverse actively. Tencent participated in Roblox's Series G financing for US$150 million as early as February 2020 and obtained the exclusive distribution rights of Roblox products in China.
In April and June on2021, Byte Dance invested in the "Mashangqiankun" (a metaverse concept company), and bought Pico (a domestic VR R&D company).
In December 2021, Baidu held “Create 2021” in its metauniverse "Xirang".
Sources: Internet
We can also see from the data of the China National Intellectual Property Administration that since August 2021, the number of trademarks about metaverse has surged in China. And the number of monthly trademark registrations has risen from the ten-digit level to the hundred-digit level.
Data Deadline: December 31, 2021
Source: Trademark Office of China National Intellectual Property Administration
The metaverse, the future
When the Internet was born, people use the "Global Village" to describe how the Internet has dramatically shortened the distance between human space and time and made international communication easier.
With the development of smartphone technology, human beings walk through the early Internet era, and into the mobile Internet era. Communication between people has become convenient increasingly. The way we experience the world has been enhanced. From text to pictures, today, video has become our main source of information. Our pursuit of video from 1080P to 4K, from 60Hz to 120Hz.
Our pursuit of video clarity has gradually approached the physiological limits of human recognition. However, this is far from the limit of the human pursuit of "social". The goal of the metaverse is to break the barriers from the screen. So that, people are not the "spectator" of the screen anymore but can be in the network. Not only to see and hear, but also to touch, to smell, and to feel the Internet.
Everything people do online now, socializing, playing, gaming, and working, will be more natural and real. The metaverse seems to be the future people are looking for.
It is foreseeable that the world of the metaverse is coming with the efforts of the global Internet and the impetus of global capital. Every new thing will go through a process of development from disorder to order. This process contains infinite opportunities and risks.
Currently, the meta-universe industry has not yet emerged as a prominent legal issue, and there are no corresponding national standards. However, in recent years, China introduced a number of laws and regulations, and those policies are truly affecting the development of the industry.
For example, the "Network Security Law", "Data Security Law", "Internet Information Service Management Regulations" and "Blockchain Information Service Management Regulations"， those laws and regulations are maintained network operation security and information data security; the "Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China" and "The Civil Code of the People's Republic of China" are focus on maintaining the personal information protection of network users.
Overall, as the next target of the Internet industry, the metaverse will attract a large number of companies and capital to join. Industry practitioners should be alert to all kinds of risks and keep the bottom line of compliance while pursuing opportunities.
- 本文作者 -
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