Technology giants are entering the "metaverse" one after another. Does "Ready Player One" predict the future of the Internet?

In 2021, the concept of "metaverse" suddenly heated up, attracting many technology giants. What is the connection between the metaverse and today's Internet? Is it a huge outlet or a huge gimmick?

Written by reporter Ding Lin Edited by Ding Lin

New Media Editor/Nie Shufang

"You can do anything and go anywhere. You can ski on the pyramids and climb Everest with Batman..."

In the 2018 sci-fi movie Ready Player One, a slum boy named Wade Wozniacki enjoys playing a virtual online game. People in the movie enter this virtual world called "Oasis" through VR (virtual reality) helmets.

△Still from Ready Player One (Source: Warner Bros.)

In reality, many technology giants believe that the future of the Internet is a similar virtual world, except that the name of this virtual world is not "Oasis" but "Metaverse".

At the end of July this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg proposed in a financial report conference call that Facebook should be known as the "Metaverse Company". He hopes that Facebook will complete this strategic shift within five years and allow the mainstream population to use reliable VR helmets and AR glasses by the end of the 2020s. Eventually, people will immerse themselves in this virtual world in the form of VR, or integrate part of the virtual world into the real world in the form of augmented reality or mixed reality.

As people have become more "homebound" during the epidemic, Facebook has made a lot of money from advertising in the past year or so. Zuckerberg's sudden announcement of a change in the business model was obviously not an easy decision. A few weeks after Zuckerberg put forward his ambition, his company launched a VR workspace for people who need to work remotely.

△The virtual office space is currently in the testing phase

In addition to Facebook, Apple confirmed its acquisition of VR startup NextVR in May last year; in April this year, game company Epic Games announced that it had raised $1 billion to invest in its Metaverse plan; Tencent not only holds a large number of shares in Epic Games, but also invested in another Metaverse game Roblox; in May this year, Microsoft announced that it is working hard to build an "enterprise Metaverse"; at the end of August, ByteDance spent 9 billion yuan to acquire domestic VR hardware startup Pico (Little Bird Look) to lay out the Metaverse; in South Korea, an organization called the "Metaverse Alliance" is lobbying local governments and companies to jointly develop an open national VR platform...

The “metaverse” has gradually become a global technology hotspot. Nowadays, technology companies that have not yet added the metaverse label are probably “embarrassed to say hello to others.” But ordinary people are mainly concerned about: What is this metaverse?

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The Sci-Fi Origins of the Metaverse

The concept of metaverse was first created by American science fiction writer Neil Stevenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash. According to the novel, people in the future communicate with each other in the form of virtual avatars in an immersive digital world.

(Photo source: Visual China)

The current Internet allows us to break physical boundaries and connect with people far away. But while providing convenience, the form of the medium also greatly limits the experience of interpersonal communication - we can only interact through the limited methods provided by the platform (such as instant messaging, email, video). Stevenson foresaw that the future Internet will be a three-dimensional virtual living space. People can enter and exit this virtual space at any time, and interact with others in real time and with the virtual world.

Although the term metaverse is increasingly used to describe the vision that the Internet will evolve into a virtual world, it does not yet have a clear and unified definition. Stevenson himself has no idea what the metaverse should look like. In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2017, he explained that he just made up the concept.

On the other hand, the concepts of Omniverse, the “omniverse” of chip giant Nvidia, Magicverse, the “magic universe” of augmented reality company Magic Leap, the “full-real Internet” proposed by Ma Huateng, the “mirror world” described by Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired magazine, as well as “AR cloud” and “space Internet” all have the shadow of the metaverse. Before the publication of Snow Crash, the science fiction concept of “cyberspace” also had similar properties. Perhaps it is because “great minds think alike” that the various characteristics of concepts such as the metaverse and the omniverse are very similar to the ideal future Internet of technology giants.

△On August 12, Nvidia revealed in the documentary "Connecting in the Metaverse" that during a speech by the company's CEO Huang Renxun earlier this year, there was a dozen seconds of footage of a digital double produced by the Omniverse technology platform (Image source: Nvidia)

If we must give a definition to the Metaverse, it is the future tense of the Internet. The prefix "meta" in the word Metaverse means transcendence, and technology companies choose to use this word to highlight its attributes that transcend the Internet. The Internet we can access today is a two-dimensional world that we "watch" through a small screen, while the future Internet envisioned by the giants will be a world in which everyone will be "in it".

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More than just virtual reality

The realization of the concept of the metaverse depends on technologies such as virtual reality, but what is the difference between it and simple virtual reality?

From the perspective of experience, users of today's virtual reality technology are isolated from each other in terms of participation. The Metaverse is considered to be a virtual reality with unified standards and instant interaction between users. The relationship between the two is similar to today's online music and the tape music of the past, today's online games and early game consoles. The same is true for listening to music and playing games, but the experience in the past was isolated, and in the future it will be interconnected.

Rabindra Ratan, associate professor of media and information science at Michigan State University, once wrote that the metaverse has three key characteristics: reality, interoperability and standardization.

(Photo source: Visual China)

First of all, only when the virtual space creates an immersive feeling, or even creates a "digital twin" of the real world, can online interactions be more "real" and improve the quality of people's communication. At present, VR technology is a powerful tool to achieve this kind of realistic immersion. Facebook has set up a department called "Reality Lab". The primary task of this department is to create a "sense of presence" in the metaverse - the kind of immersive and selfless atmosphere. Many engineers in this team have a background in online game development.

Secondly, interoperability means that people's "virtual existence" can seamlessly switch between "planetary" (such as work planet, entertainment planet, etc.) in the metaverse. This vision requires technology companies to break the barriers of the existing small garden-like "ecosystem" and create a more open and decentralized world. The gradually mature blockchain technology will be applied to the metaverse as the technical basis for people to purchase virtual goods and services.

Finally, technical standardization is the basis for the interoperability of various platforms in the Metaverse. From printing to instant messaging, mass media need unified technical standards to be widely adopted. At present, international organizations such as the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group (OMIG) are already developing relevant standards.

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Is the “metaverse” real?

It is not difficult to imagine that if we want to create a vibrant virtual world, the relevant VR and AR devices need to be as widely popular as today's smartphones and easy to carry and use.

△In the recently released movie "Player", the protagonist accidentally saw a "parallel world" after putting on rose-colored glasses (Photo source: Wired)

But it's not an easy task. So far, small and lightweight VR headsets often have limited image quality, and high-performance VR headsets are "tethered" to the computer by data cables. Although VR headsets have become increasingly lightweight and affordable in recent years, the application of this technology has always been limited to a small group of people (game enthusiasts).

As early as 2014, Facebook acquired the virtual reality company Oculus. In 2017, Zuckerberg publicly announced that the company's future goal is to "enable 1 billion people to use virtual reality", but there is still a big gap between this goal and reality.

In addition, just as today's Internet industry can be divided into hardware, software, services and other aspects, the construction of the metaverse's infrastructure also requires the accumulation of other technologies beyond VR technology; problems such as privacy infringement, verbal violence, fraud, addiction, etc. on the Internet cannot be simply solved by "immigrating" to the virtual world.

In this case, why is the concept of the metaverse suddenly popular? The British version of Wired pointed out that during the past year or so of the epidemic, people's travel has been more or less restricted, so many interpersonal interactions have shifted from the real world to the Internet. For example, many people have tried video conferencing, some have attended graduation ceremonies in Minecraft, and others have held weddings in Animal Crossing... People have found that the virtual world is not necessarily empty, and it can also have an impact on reality. There may be a chance to establish new social relationships.

△In the summer of 2020, Zhejiang University graduates toured the virtual campus in Minecraft (Source: Element Valley)

The risk of missing out is considerable, and once a breakthrough is achieved, the reward will also be considerable. At this stage, advertising revenue accounts for most of Facebook's revenue. But after becoming a metaverse company, new sources of income may also be generated in the new "universe", such as the sale of virtual items, virtual services, virtual advertising space, etc. Zuckerberg said that people will buy fashionable clothes for their virtual characters, or go to virtual attractions.

Just as the Internet today does not belong to any one company, if the Metaverse becomes a reality, it will not be a product exclusively owned by any one company. Zuckerberg’s strategic layout seems to be repeating the process of his founding Facebook in 2004—getting there first and seizing the commanding heights of the market.

The term "metaverse" is a poetic term that originated from science fiction. From many perspectives, the metaverse will be the ultimate expression of social technology. But in the short term, this concept will not really enter people's lives. Tencent Research Institute wrote an article stating: "Currently, the best experience of the metaverse is still in games. Starting from this C-end scenario with the highest degree of preparation, the metaverse may gradually become infinite."

(Image source: cnet.com)

On the other hand, since the concept of the Metaverse is currently vague and somewhat mysterious, it has become a "marketing panacea" after its exposure has increased. Companies have taken advantage of the popularity and claimed that they have already laid out Metaverse business to attract investment.

The virtual world "Oasis" in the movie "Ready Player One" was released in 2025. So when will the Metaverse be "open for public testing"? Probably no one can set a specific date.

Produced by: Science Central Kitchen

Produced by: Beijing Science and Technology News | Science Plus Client

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