Famous economist Teng Tai
In 2021, because there are many world-renowned large companies that are involved in the meta-universe. For a time, the meta-universe became the most cutting-edge and most concerned topic in the capital market and even the whole society. The praisers believe that the metacosm is an increasingly real digital virtual world, the next generation of the Internet, it will lead us from the two-dimensional plane world of computers and mobile phones into the three-dimensional world of AR, VR, XR, from "online" to "present", its impact on the world is comparable to the Internet and mobile Internet; while the derogators believe that it has neither technological innovation nor product innovation, pure speculation, and the end of the metaverse is "a financial scam of drumming and passing flowers", more famously" The metacosm will be an inner volume of the entire human civilization", which will immerse people in the virtual world of AR/VR for a long time and affect the ideal pursuit of human beings for the "sea of stars".
So, is the metacosm speculative or the future of humanity? Will the metacosm promote the development of scientific research and change people's lives, or will it slow down the pace of people's exploration of nature?
The essence of the metacosm: a dualistic parallel world
Before talking about the nature of the metaverse, let's talk about the relationship between technological development and application scenarios. At the beginning of 2021, there was a debate in China about whether 5G investment was advanced, and Mr. Lou Jiwei, an official scholar whom I respected very much, proposed that China's 5G investment was too advanced, because there were not enough application scenarios, which caused a huge response in the society for a while. After seeing this, I wrote an article "Whether 5G Investment Needs to Be Advanced, Application Scenarios Change Lifestyle", which proposes that in the 3G and 4G investment era in 2009 or 2010, in fact, people may not imagine that there will be a series of scene innovations such as WeChat, Douyin, mobile payment, online car-hailing, and shared bicycles in a few years, thinking that technological innovation and investment can be appropriately advanced, and proposing that the development prospects of 5G depend on the innovation of application scenarios that will inevitably emerge. Although I firmly believe that 5G will inevitably have application scenarios that the decision-making department cannot imagine in the future, it is natural to imagine what new scenarios will appear in a few years. It is in this eager anticipation of 5G application scenarios that in the second half of 2021, the metaverse suddenly exploded. The lack of application scenarios for 5G seems to be solved – according to the attitude of actively embracing new things, the first impression of the metaverse is the big bang of scene innovation that occurs in the digital virtual world, and the great fusion of scene innovation between the digital virtual world and the real physical world. From this point of view, some of the criticism of the metaverse in society seems to be not wrong, its core driving force is neither technological innovation nor product innovation, at least in essence can not be compared with technological innovation such as the Internet and product innovation such as smart phones - but the innovation of application scenarios will also change people's lifestyles, and will stimulate the innovation and development of technology and products! If there are not enough application scenarios, 5G, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, the value of these great technologies themselves will naturally be doubted by society. Metacosm not only provides a sufficiently broad application scenario for 5G technology, but also provides a sufficiently large number of application scenarios for many new technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, cloud computing, and product innovations such as AR, VR products, digital currencies, digital assets, games, media, and movies. The difference between the metaverse and the Internet and the mobile Internet is that the Internet itself is a technological revolution, the core is technology-driven, and the core of the mobile Internet is driven by products such as smart phones; and the core driving force of the metacosm is neither a certain technology nor a core product, but a big explosion of scene innovation in the digital virtual world. The scene innovation of the metaverse is different from the previous mobile Internet, which goes deep into the space from two-dimensional space, that is, to build a huge digital virtual world, which can also be called digital parallel space or digital parallel world. In a new unprecedented parallel space parallel to the real world, the metaverse will inevitably bring a lot of new supply, create a lot of new demand, constantly change people's lifestyles, and bring new economic growth. How big is the space for scene innovation in the metacosm? Imagine how much innovation and growth there is simply by copying the real world into a digital parallel space! At the end of the 90s, when the mobile Internet appeared, the first generation of Internet people said that we let every grain of sand in the world have an IP address; then in the metaverse era, will people make a panoramic and three-dimensional presentation of the sun, moon, stars, oceans and lakes, mountains, rivers, land, buildings and roads, etc., in the digital parallel world? Of course! In fact, this kind of creation has long begun, in a Chinese visual industry center that I visited, the staff has initially copied most of the sun, moon and stars in the digital world, and also copied most of the oceans on the earth, when we put on the /VR glasses, we can not only swim between galaxies, the ocean, and even wave our hands and interact with the fish in the ocean - if there is a game or film producer who needs to shoot a story here in the future, Or if the military needs a digital parallel world to simulate a battle between mountains or cities, can we say that such digital assets have no market value? The creation and creation of scenes in the parallel space of the metaverse is not limited to copying the real world, but also can be derived from people's endless imagination. Whether it is the magical scenes, people, objects, mythical beasts in the Classic of Mountains and Seas or journey to the West, or the magical world of Harry Potter, they can be presented in a three-dimensional way in the virtual world of the metaverse, and let people who enter this digital parallel space through AR, VR or other entrances have close contact with the people, things and scenes here and interact with them freely. With the digital parallel space of virtual digital people, things, scenes the original more, virtual society interaction more and more, interactive relationships more and more abundant, a huge digital parallel world gradually formed. Of course, the scenes, people, and things in the digital parallel space of the metaverse can also go out of the virtual world of the digital parallel space and present them in the real world in a physical way in a certain proportion - it is conceivable that there will be a large number of scenes, characters, and animals from the virtual world in the metaverse era. 5 to 15 years later, no matter which park and playground we walk in, there are both real-world lakes, plants, animals, and digital parallel worlds, where various venues, scenes, people, animals, plants, and plants are copied into the real world after creation. It is unimaginable how much this kind of creation and replication to the real world can be, how big the market can be brought, how many product applications can be brought, and how to change the real world and people's lives! Some people call the people, things, and scenes copied from the real world to the digital virtual space "digital twin world", the people, things and scenes created entirely in the digital virtual space as the "digital native world", and the situation that maps from the digital virtual world to the real world and interacts with the real world is called the "virtual symbiotic world". Imagine that perhaps ten years later, when we put on the /VR helmet, we can instantly enter the digital virtual world world or shuttle to the "scene" of the game thousands of miles away, and interact with the people, things, and scenes in the virtual world; when all kinds of people (AI robots), objects, and venues from the virtual word world are everywhere in the real world, can we still distinguish between digital twins and digital natives, and can we also distinguish between real experiences and experiences of digital virtual worlds? According to quantum theory, matter is both a particle and a wave, so the world is binary, with both the physicalized world form and the wave form. According to Mr. Lin Zuoming's theory of "binary value tolerance and mode", the underlying properties of the universe are originally binary, one is the material form, the other is the information reliable state, just like the yin and yang fish in the Chinese Taiji diagram, the material world and the information world interact with each other to jointly promote the evolution of the universe.
Graph source network
The metacosm does not only refer to the digital virtual world, but the virtual symbiotic world in which the material world and the information world influence and promote each other, that is, the binary parallel world, the core driving force that the metacosmum first brings to this world, is a "cosmic big bang" of the digital parallel world, which in turn triggers the scene innovation big bang of the dualistic world of virtual and real symbiosis.
The impact of the metacosm on technological innovation and product innovation Some people worry that once people are immersed in the metaverse, they will stop at the illusory world and no longer explore the objective world of the star sea, in fact, the metacosm and the digital parallel world can also greatly support the scientific research work of people running to the sea of stars. Almost all the research work in the real world can be simulated in the digital virtual world first, and then it will be moved to the real world after the simulation is successful, such as the scientific research work of aerospace, now need to calculate various data in the digital world, repeated simulation experiments, and then can carry out the launch of aviation and spacecraft such as satellites in the real world; new product creation and new business model creation in all walks of life can be like this, first in the digital parallel space (virtual world) in the operation, simulation, experiment And then to the real world display, this can not only reduce the real world's personal risks and physical losses, but also in the digital virtual world as needed to "extend" the time, or "shorten" the time, thus greatly supporting the real scientific research work. Obviously, the scene innovation and technological development in the virtual world or digital parallel space do not necessarily prevent human beings from rushing to the sea of stars to explore the objective world, but can use its unique mode to support human scientific research and creation, helping people to better explore the ocean, the starry sky, and the microscopic world of high-speed motion. In addition to applications in the field of scientific research, simulation experiments in digital virtual space can also be widely used in military, sports competitions, education, traffic management and other "social experiments". For example, in the military aspect, if the original simple sand table can be pushed into a realistic meta-universe deduction, and the simulation of the digital virtual space is used to repeatedly act before the real battle begins, it will inevitably be able to reduce the real battle sacrifices and losses; in sports competitions, if the information of the opponents in the real world can be completely copied to the digital virtual world, after repeated exercises, the winning rate will inevitably increase; in the transportation management, more and more exercises and experiments will be carried out in the digital virtual world... Because the time of the digital virtual world can be adjusted, all social experiments can be here where cause and effect can be immediately presented without any engineering and physical costs, making them the least costly and efficient way of social experimentation. The metacosm is inseparable from the support of 5G, blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and other technologies, while the big bang of metacosm scene innovation can reverse to stimulate the development of 5G, blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and other technologies. With the advent of the meta-universe era and the big explosion of meta-universe innovation, China's 5G investment growth rate is expected to usher in another investment peak after experiencing a brief decline. The massive data demand of the meta-universe will also further stimulate the construction of big data centers, thus driving the great development of related industries. Of course, the most anticipated metaverse application scenario is not necessarily 5G and big data, but blockchain technology and digital currency. Only in the virtual world of the metaverse, decentralized blockchain technology is so urgently needed, because virtual assets and transactions there cannot be secured without blockchain technology; and only in the digital virtual world of the metacosm can digital currencies obtain unlimited application scenarios, and digital assets such as NFT (Non-Fungible Token, that is, non-homogeneous tokens) will have explosive demand. This is also why the world's most anticipated metaverse is actually those digital currencies and digital asset investors, and why Facebook, which has long been planning to issue digital currencies, decided to all in metacosm and even changed its name. Of course, the endless scene innovation of the metaverse will also provide larger scenarios for the development of artificial intelligence and create greater new needs. There are also game, social, entertainment and other content innovations from the digital virtual world, and its space has also evolved from the original two-dimensional plane to the three-dimensional world, from "online" to "present", opening up unlimited space for innovation and creation.
As for VR, AR and other related hardware products, they will naturally be subject to the development of the metaverse and explode. Just as sharing bicycles is essentially a scene innovation - in the early days of this new scenario, China's bicycle-sharing companies purchased tens of millions of bicycles every month. Today, the global shipment of VR/AR glasses is not more than ten million units, if 2021 is the first year of the meta-universe, who can guarantee that the annual shipment of VR/AR glasses or helmets around the world will not quickly exceed 100 million units in a few years, or even more than 1 billion units?
Metacosm and soft values
If our world is originally a binary world composed of particles and waves, or of material forms and information forms, then the value form and value creation law of the binary world are inherently different. The form of value created in the material world from natural resources is called "hard value"; and the form of value created in the main information world with people's creative thinking is called "soft value". In fact, the main body that makes up all our economic value has long been soft value: for example, the value of R&D design in manufacturing is soft value. Taking Apple's smartphone as an example, although it is a manufacturing product, its value is mainly soft value - the value of research and development, design. Apple in Silicon Valley completes 80 percent of product value creation, while fabricators around the world do only 20 percent of their product value creation. As a soft value creator, Apple is not the so-called "productive service industry" of these manufacturing and assembly companies; in turn, these manufacturing and assembly enterprises are all for Apple. The more "soft" the value, the more hard technology content there is; the more "hard" the industry, the less scientific and technological content there is. In addition to R&D and design in manufacturing, the creative and experiential value of the cultural and entertainment industry is also a soft value – it consumes almost no natural resources, but can meet our unlimited spiritual needs. In addition, knowledge industries such as education and high-end service industries create soft value; the procedures, information, traffic, and even the brands and experiences of traditional manufacturing industries in the information industry are also soft values... The source of soft value is not natural resources, but people's creative thinking; the law of soft value creation is completely different from the law of hard wealth creation in Newton's physical world, and the law of soft value creation follows the law of motion in the quantum world.
According to the "scene principle" of soft value theory, the scene is the consumption mode, "all the markets in the world are actually the projection of the scene", there will be a catering market in the consumption scene such as eating, and there will be a taxi and online car market in the consumption scenario such as taxi. Sharing bicycles as a scene innovation, it uses the original bicycle technology, mobile scanning technology, navigation and satellite positioning technology, neither technological innovation, nor product innovation, but it has greatly changed people's way of travel, creating a new market. Among the thousands of outstanding entrepreneurs, those who can really invent the Internet and invent smart phones are a minority after all, 80% of entrepreneurs can continuously change our lifestyle, improve our quality of life, and create new markets, drive the development of various technologies and products, and drive economic growth. How many scene innovations can be created in the metaverse, how many new markets can be created, bringing about economic growth of the corresponding scale! All value creation in the metacosm is soft value creation. Unlike the Internet era and the mobile Internet era, traffic is the core soft value, in the five major types of soft value of research and development, creativity, scene, experience, and traffic, the core soft value of the metaverse may be the scene value and experience value, because in addition to the scene value mentioned above, the biggest difference between the digital virtual world of the metaverse and the real physical world lies in the difference in experience, including the visual experience, auditory experience, interactive experience of the binary world, with the future may be more realistic touch or other experience. So, how are the scene values, experience values, and soft values such as research and development, creativity, and traffic in the metaverse created, and what soft value laws are followed? The soft value source of the metacosm is not a natural resource, mainly people's research and development ideas; the soft value of the metacosm is not purely objective, but between the subjective and the objective, to a large extent, its value depends on people's collective cognition; the soft value of the metacosm is a relative value rather than an absolute value, the soft value is not a point but a domain; the movement of the soft value of the metacosm is sometimes divergent and sometimes convergent; the supply and demand curve of the metacosm is not a definite function, but erratic In the world of the metacosm, change can be continuous or jumpy; in the world of the metacosm, it is not that there must be a cause and effect, and that there must be a cause, but that the cause and effect are reversible and mutually causal; ... The creation of soft value is also very different from the value creation of real physical wealth, and only by mastering the new laws of these soft value creation can enterprises and investors better grasp the investment opportunities of the metacosm. In the soft value world of the metaverse, the core production factors are data and creativity, without consuming too many natural resources or general labor, and their element scarcity is completely different from the material world; the core productivity may be algorithms, computing power, artificial intelligence, including cloud computing, edge computing, and various artificial intelligence tools, rather than bulldozers or excavators; the core production relations are neither the production relations of traditional agricultural societies nor the production relations of industrial societies. It is not even a platform-centric production relationship in the era of mobile Internet, but some "decentralized" virtual symbiotic relationship... How will we grasp the new law of soft value creation, what kind of economic system will the metaverse build, and what kind of social governance model is needed?
Opportunities and new formats in the metacosm
It seems that the metacosm is not a simple fried idea, but a new world of virtual and real symbiosis, a new form of the future of human society. In the early stage of the development of Yuanyuyuan, we can regard it as a scene innovation explosion that deserves serious attention and serious attention, and this scene innovation can drive a lot of technological innovation, product innovation, change people's lifestyles, let new supply create new demand, and bring new economic growth. It not only deserves serious research and serious attention, but also brings great business opportunities. So, standing in the first year of the meta-universe, how should enterprises and investors participate in the investment of the meta-universe? The first outbreak may be the hardware side of the entrance to the metaverse such as AR/VR/MR/XR, as well as various helmets, displays, chips, and so on that provide services for these products. In the long run, there will be other hardware entrances, and even the brain-computer interface that Musk believes in will definitely break through and become a reality. The second is the content side that invests in the digital parallel world, the creation of various virtual digital people, objects, scenes, and related games, movies, food, etc., all of which are facing the transformation and creation from two-dimensional information to three-dimensional scenes. Of course, there are related industrial chains such as 5G, blockchain, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence pulled by the metacosm. Finally, digital currencies and digital assets in the virtual world are naturally valuable, but they must be under the law of soft value creation and pricing, and be wary of vicious speculation in this field.
In addition to focusing on the investment opportunities brought by the metacosm, it is also necessary to study the changes of the metacosm to the traditional industry. The first one to be changed may be the cultural entertainment industry, etc., including games, movies, television, the future metaverse of various entertainment industries, will change from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, from flat to three-dimensional. As for what entertainment models and new formats will eventually evolve, it is still too early to say. Just like mobile Internet technology eventually made Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Meituan and other platform companies, we don't know which giants the meta-universe will eventually achieve, but early participants have the opportunity to win. The second thing that may be changed may be exhibition or tourism, such as using the scene of the meta-universe to build countless virtual venues and theme parks in the real world, so that people can freely shuttle between the virtual world and the real world, providing an unprecedented interactive experience, which may be a new form of future exhibition and tourism competition. The third thing that may be changed is education, advertising, and media. When various virtual digital people in the digital parallel space appear one by one, people can have skills in the digital parallel world, and we do not know how many unimaginable new formats will evolve in the future education, advertising, and media industries. The fourth one that will be redefined is business. The Internet and mobile Internet have changed traditional commerce, and the business of the meta-universe era is afraid that it will be rewritten again. How much time do people spend with AR/VR eyes on virtual stores in the digital world, and how much time do they spend visiting stores of real physics? How many goods and services that were originally satisfied in the real physical world will gradually transfer to the virtual world of the metaverse? How many goods that come out of the virtual world will become popular in the real world? The fifth thing that has been changed is the financial industry. The national credit currency issued by the central banks of various countries still occupies a dominant position in the real world, but people use decentralized digital currency to trade in the virtual digital world, if the asset scale of the virtual world is getting larger and larger, and even extended and reflected to the real world, what changes will occur in the future financial form? Finally, with the changes in the above-mentioned soft industries, people's office methods, lifestyles, and social division of labor in the meta-universe era will inevitably undergo profound changes. Manufacturing is not only changed by the new technology of the metaverse, but also by new ways of working, new social division of labor: when people can be together no matter where they are, when more and more on-site office can be replaced by remote virtual scenes, when intelligent manufacturing, intelligent control and other AI robots shuttle between virtual and real factories, is the factory still the current factory? Or is it the industry it is now? What kind of new jobs and lifestyles will the "Avatars" of the Metascopic Era face?
The possible negative effects of the metaverse
The first negative impact that the metacosm can bring is the possibility of causing people to be "over-immersed" in the digital virtual world. Compared with the games of the two-dimensional flat world, the games of the metaverse era are bound to be more realistic and immersive, not to mention underage children, how many adults can resist such temptations? Now we go to the cinema to see a movie no matter how much investment, after all, or stay out of the matter, if we watch a war movie in the metaverse era, as long as we wear an AR/VR helmet can carry a gun to fight a fight, this realistic sense of presentation and story immersion brought about by the problem of human over-immersion, is indeed a problem worthy of forward-looking research. Although the negative impact of the metaverse is not as common as the former, the consequences are probably more serious, that is, the wrong application of the yuanyuyuan social scene experiment - the same weapon, the police can use, the gangsters can also use; the military application of the metacosm can be used to defend the country, can also be used for invasion war... How to prevent technological evil is an eternal topic faced by human beings in the process of promoting technological progress. Finally, the investment of the metacosm will inevitably bring some bubbles in the capital market and real-world hype. Whether liked or feared, the metacosm is the future form of human society, and even so, the arrival of the metacosm era will take at least 5 to 15 years, and within 5 years, the metacosm is still in the exploration and brewing preparation stage: in such a hazy period, if ar/VR equipment has not yet exploded, and a listed company can reap a number of stock price increases and stops as long as it says "supply company F" or "supply to M company's customers" in the stock market; if a content creation company, Even if all the content is still the traditional content of the two-dimensional flat world, as long as the statement of attention to the metacosm, the stock price can soar; if a media company only claims to launch a "virtual digital person" or NFT, it will double the market value; if a venue or architectural design company can transform into a meta-universe stock as long as it introduces the concept of digital virtual technology, this is not speculation, what is it? A similar situation has long appeared in the 1990s during the Internet bubble in the United States, a large amount of hot money poured into the Internet field, hundreds of Internet companies appeared for a time, attracting countless hot money to invest in these companies, valuations continued to rise, and eventually naturally the bubble burst, countless bubble participants the wealth of the ashes. However, although the Internet bubble burst, more than 90% of the early Internet companies eventually disappeared, but this does not prevent the few remaining Internet companies from completely changing the way of human work and lifestyle, constantly changing the social division of labor, creating new demand with new supply, and bringing new economic growth, so that today's Internet world has emerged. If it is not the future of mankind, why is it worth so much hype, and what speculation value is there? If there is no speculation, where is there enough capital inflow to promote its development? So the metaverse is both the future of mankind and the present and indeed speculation and hype. We do not have to block the influx of speculative funds, nor can we avoid the hype around the theme of the metacosm, but at least three points can be determined: First, these investments and speculations will definitely spawn a bubble, but also spawn a number of great enterprises, around the front end and back end of the growth opportunities will also greatly promote economic growth; second, once the bubble bursts, it will inevitably be a chicken feather, so that blindly participating investors pay a heavy price; third, the metacosm will eventually change the economy, change the social division of labor, Change our lives, change the world. In the face of the above three inevitable outcomes of the metaverse, what we should do may not be to pursue, or curse and condemn like a myth, but to always be sober about who we are, and whether we choose to actively know or passively accept? Where will we take on this process, what risks will we take, and what roles will we play?