We don’t need a meta universe

0 7 11 minutes read

The following is the We don’t need a meta universe recommended by recordtrend.com. And this article belongs to the classification: Industry information.

From the early fantasy of establishing a liberal Utopia to the self driving vehicles that comprehensively replace traditional cars as planned, Silicon Valley has never lacked technical proposals that seem promising but can not be realized. The meta universe may also encounter the same fate of premature death, but the proposal of this concept itself will have a far-reaching impact. Yuancosmos is not a utopian vision, but another opportunity for technology giants to expand their scale.

More and more enterprises enter the market

Mark Zuckerberg has always stressed that he has conceived the future social way of people. On October 28, Zuckerberg officially put forward his vision for the “metauniverse” plan, that is, to create a virtual environment for users to wander, shop and work. This “more immersive Internet” should have at least the following elements:

A shared social space that can present user images. Now on social media, user image is represented by self selected avatar. In the meta universe, this image is a customized image that can move, speak and complete specified actions.

A lasting “world” for users to live and interact. Analogy of space and land resources in the real world.

The ability to own virtual property. Recently, people have tried to track and establish virtual commodity ownership with decentralized NFTs, which can flow freely between metauniverses controlled by different companies. But in reality, the standard setting of NFTs and the cooperation between companies are almost impossible.

Ability to create virtual property. Users can create their own content to enrich the meta universe. However, if the company controlling the metauniverse wants to profit from it, the copyright problem needs to be solved.

The ability to exchange and sell virtual property. However, there is no solution to such problems as whether the “ownership” of virtual land belongs to users or companies.

Multiple large companies can share intellectual property rights. It is not easy to realize the interaction between metauniverses controlled by different companies.

Realize 3D remote presentation through VR or ar glasses.

“The best way to understand the metauniverse is to experience it personally, but it’s a little difficult because it doesn’t fully exist,” Zuckerberg said. The realization of metauniverse requires technology giants such as Facebook to support the concept of metauniverse and develop necessary technical solutions. On the other hand, it requires the public to accept a new state of life: spend more time sitting at home wearing virtual devices instead of contacting the real physical world every day.

The landing of the application end of the meta universe needs to rely on the progress of the underlying technology and hardware equipment technology

After the failure of many major issues in the past decade, the technology industry urgently needs a new framework to attract funds, and metauniverse is the most prominent option.

A few weeks after Zuckerberg’s keynote speech, many enterprises have decided to accept the basic idea of metauniverse, which also shows the strong plasticity of metauniverse itself.

On November 2, Microsoft CEO Satya NADELLA delivered her own metauniverse speech on enterprise and game issues. He stressed that the concept of metauniverse includes existing video chat and collaboration tools, as well as games such as halo and my world. Such meta cosmic applications will be significantly enhanced through virtual environments. NADELLA mentioned that the metauniverse will help Microsoft “embed computing into the real world, but also the real world into computing.”

Although it is uncertain whether the metauniverse is really as attractive as NADELLA said, his attention to games and work may indeed accurately reflect the ultimate utility of the metauniverse. The public is not sure whether they will eventually integrate into the virtual environment as they integrate into the Internet, but game manufacturers and office software suppliers obviously hope to achieve such an effect, and are actively guiding the public to participate in it.

Inspiration from the game

Recently, the heated hype around the meta universe is based on the development of the game industry.

Neil Stephenson first put forward the concept of meta universe in the avalanche novel, and Ernest Klein’s number one player shows the beautiful possible appearance of meta universe with the power of modern industry. These works have even become a guide for employees of Facebook’s oculus division to help researchers understand how to combine inspiration with game elements.

Last year, venture investor Matthew ball published an influential article to promote the investment of metauniverse with fortress night as the core. He believes that fortress night was originally just a game, but it soon evolved into a social square. Players gathered here and spontaneously established a new social space in addition to the core game experience of the hundred people escape.

Enterprises began to hold activities themed by movies such as star wars in this game, and invited famous artists such as Travis Scott and Ariana Grande to participate in online concerts. In addition, there are customized items from marvel or DC characters in the game. The profit model of Fortress night was established in this way: players exchanged real money for v-buck, and then used this token to buy virtual goods in the game or “battle season tickets” to support the regular update of the game.

Ball believes that the metauniverse will surpass the current fortress night and inherit the existing social and business models. He even calls fortress night an “ideal prototype display” of the concept of the metauniverse.

Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, also seized the hot spot of metauniverse and helped him raise a lot of funds, but at the same time, he criticized the actions of the current technology giants. He claimed that the meta universe should be an open and interoperable platform, not a closed ecosystem.

In order to support its view, epic sued apple for the sharing terms of the app store. However, the judge pointed out in the lawsuit that the purpose of epic’s efforts to win the lawsuit is to get back a large amount of considerable profits. Since everyone is for their own interests, it is absurd to use moral attack again. This also reflects a major trend in the development history of the technology industry: openness and personal empowerment often give way to the interests of enterprises.

In the broader game field, heavyweight manufacturers such as ea, square Enix, take two and even Ubisoft have followed up, and recently issued a positive statement on NFTs. Some manufacturers are considering making game works of “making money while playing”, so as to encourage players to continue playing games to obtain valuable resale NFT projects, and finally realize the integration of speculative investment and games. In fact, as virtual goods generate a lot of money, games will begin to become the work of more and more players. In this context, the meta universe is indeed expected to completely change the way people work.

An iron fist against enterprise employees

Over the years, the technology industry has been subverting people’s basic concept of work and employment.

In the 1980s, Silicon Valley enterprises represented by Apple began to implement a more hierarchical work structure. Due to the great recession, the casual economy was born. Application based service delivery channels convert workers into independent contractors while depriving them of their rights and well-being as employees. The launch of the meta universe will bring new changes to the working mode we are just familiar with.

As expressed in the recent Microsoft announcement and Facebook horizon workrooms, work applications will become the core of the metauniverse.

Why are giants suddenly interested in virtual office environment? During the period of COVID-19, a large part of the labor force, including technicians, moved to remote areas, and comfortable life made many practitioners do not want to return to big city. Therefore, enterprises have deployed a series of software to track their employees and ensure that they will not be lazy when they are not in the office. Metauniverse application provides a new possibility for such needs: even if they are not in the physical office, employees in the virtual office will be closely monitored by the boss anytime and anywhere.

This shift may be more important than expanding the scope of monitoring. Enterprises such as Uber and Amazon not only launched algorithm management systems to limit workers’ autonomy and improve production objectives as early as 2010, but also expanded the number of personnel involved in piecework outsourcing services through platforms such as casual economy and Mechanical Turk. Ball wrote that the meta universe will become “the next major labor platform”, while Zuckerberg said that the meta universe allows “people to find jobs and living space wherever they live.”

Against the background that Silicon Valley is increasingly dependent on contract workers and outsourcing services, the rapid warming of the meta universe is obviously not a good thing. Casual workers warn that the first step in the full spread of this business model is to lower their treatment standards. More precisely, the workplace built on the meta universe is likely to become another heavy iron fist on employees.

And making money from games has long been nothing new. In early 2000, many workers in Asia, Africa and Latin America engaged in businesses such as gold training, including earning game currency in large multiplayer online games and selling these tokens to more affluent Western players. However, as merchant said in his recent article “technology can’t save mankind”, although all this will gradually make the virtual labor force a reality, it also increases the difficulty for workers to assert their rights and obtain respect, and it is more difficult to convey their demands to employers. “

The practical significance of the universe

The meta universe is a broad vision, which also indicates that digital technology will further dominate all aspects of our daily life. During the epidemic, we were forced to spend more time using digital services rather than contacting the real world, and the income and profits of technology enterprises soared. Although the popularity of the meta universe will not be as fast as Zuckerberg’s idea, as long as this concept is still advancing, it will one day become an unavoidable reality for game players and some work practitioners.

Over the years, video game manufacturers have successfully changed the game development mode and the idea of embedding monetization strategy in the game. This can not only maximize profits, but also enable enterprises to easily force specific services into the working environment and eventually spread to the consumer market. Slack and zoom are the most typical cases in this regard. However, we still have a way to stop all this.

In 2017, EA cancelled the micro trading and booty box system in Star Wars: Frontline II in order to calm the anger of players. The reason why players are dissatisfied is that the underlying logic of this design is “the more krypton, the stronger”, forcing players to spend money constantly. After the dispute, regulators in many countries / regions followed up the matter. Rob Fahey, special editor of gameindustry.biz, believes that the business model of making money while playing is likely to face similar review. In addition, the technology industry itself has also erupted into a growing labor movement – once employers begin to test the boundaries of morality or put some colleagues at risk, employees will collectively voice back at employers.

Today, metauniverse is just a new name for some kind of virtual reality or augmented reality game, which is better remembered and more ambitious. The concept of meta universe is only reflected in science fiction, and there has been a lack of profound practical significance behind it. Neil Stephenson created this word for the first time in his 1992 novel avalanche, but there is little in the book about how the dream environment of the meta universe can replace the real world and how to operate self consistently. Even more ironically, when writers mention the metauniverse, they always warn us to stay away from it – it’s very dangerous.

The author of avalanche has been emphasizing that the meta universe is very dangerous in nature. The title of avalanche comes from a digital drug used by the residents of the meta universe in the novel. Its harmful effects on nerves will not only act in the virtual environment, but also extend to the external reality. Zuckerberg and others actually misinterpret the expression of metacosmic novels. However, this keen judgment on the dangerous atmosphere is not reflected in the current meta cosmic technology fantasy. On the contrary, technology giants feel that this concept has treasure to dig.

CEOs in the technology industry know that most of the daily lives of billions of people still exist outside the computer screen. They buy cars, do gardening, date, sit by the lake and pass the time. In any case, no technology enterprise can really occupy people’s leisure time. But there may be another option: as long as we guide the public to give up their attachment to the specific ways to meet their desires, we can let them get used to achieving their fantasies in the virtual world. Slowly, they began to adapt to life far from reality and indulge in the seemingly beautiful virtual world that has long been penetrated by capitalization.

At present, this does not have strong technical feasibility, but it is not important. What is important is that many science and technology enterprises pay attention to this direction and realize the possibility: even if it is only a hypothesis, yuanuniverse does solve the practical problems in physics, commerce, politics and so on. If it becomes a reality, metauniverse will eventually establish a “company country” or “national company”. This super large version of Amazon can summarize all elements such as raw materials, supply chain, production, manufacturing, distribution and even use into the same service system. And this has become a consumption black hole that we can never escape.

Facebook is gone. Now it’s only meta. Silicon Valley is ready to tell the story of “meta universe”. We should think about how the technology industry uses scientific and technological achievements to support its commercial interests, and find another technology path that can really serve the public interest.

Compiled by: nuclear cola, Chu Xingjuan

From: InfoQ