【Tidal Business Review/Text】
In 2021, also the second year of the post-epidemic era, the epidemic has shaped a new era with a choppy force, which has imprisoned everyone's pace, but stimulated everyone's "imagination", and the "2020" that was once imagined in the primary school text has a basic outline.
With the help of capital and technology, 2021, the future has come.
01 Metacosm: The Interweaving of Romanticism and Rational Technology
Technology became a particularly favored field this year, especially the word "metaverse", which ignited the enthusiasm of capital, and this word full of romantic imagination and rigorous scientific color became a hot topic of the year.
What is the metaverse?
In fact, there is no official concept so far, after all, this "universe" is still in the conceptual stage, and we can only think sporadically based on the actual technical conditions and clarify the logical concepts in it. After the development of technology clusters, the metacosm is more like a network, including extended reality (XR), blockchain, cloud computing, digital twins, artificial intelligence and other technologies.
Recognized basic characteristics include immersive experiences, virtual twins, open creation, strong social attributes, and more.
Figure/pexels
In fact, the term was first proposed by science fiction writers, in 1992, the famous American science fiction master Neil Stephenson described the metaverse in his novel "Avalanche": "Put on headphones and eyepieces, find a connected terminal, you can enter the virtual space simulated by the computer and parallel to the real world in a virtual way."
In other words, it is easier to understand, the "metaverse" is almost similar to the "oasis" in "Ready Player One", which is the "second space" outside the real time and space of human beings, and we use certain equipment to enter this virtual space and carry out a series of activities such as production, in short, it is a new world of space virtuality and time reality.
Time and space are the two fundamental material dimensions that measure society, and the "metacosm" that has changed the relationship between space and time has also changed all aspects of society and created a large number of opportunities.
In March, Roblox, a U.S.-listed game company known as the "first stock in the metacosmum," went public, and its market value soared 10 times directly to nearly $50 billion; in May, Facebook said it would transform into a metacosmic company within five years; and in August, ByteDance spent a huge amount of money to acquire VR startup Pico.
In addition to the major Internet giants, governments have also actively intervened. On July 13, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry released the "Survey Report on the Future Possibilities and Issues of the Virtual Space Industry", summarizing the urgent problems that need to be solved in the Japanese virtual space industry in order to dominate the global virtual space industry; on August 31, the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Korea released the 2022 budget, planning to spend 20 million US dollars on the development of the meta-universe platform.
How many bubbles are there in the metaverse?
The more crazy capital is, the more rational the viewer should be. After all, standing in the context of the overall environment "cold", looking back at the double axe of capitalism through the economic crisis: scientific and technological revolution and aggression. In the story of the conspiracy of technology and capital, there is no shortage of myths and bubbles.
On the one hand, at the practical level, the technical conditions and the technical support required by the "metacosm" are far apart, and artificial intelligence is still regarded as "artificial intellectual disability" most of the time; on the other hand, the revolution of the metacosm is also challenging the existing social organization, political system, etc., and will also face strict policy control.
02 Autonomous Driving: A Crowd of Men Running Wildly
Musk, who held high the banner of the meta-universe above, single-handedly created the "Tesla" in the Chinese market this year but encountered an unprecedented crisis, from "roof rights protection" to various traffic accidents, the aura above Tesla's head, which was originally known as the myth of automatic driving, was slightly dimmed.
Domestic autonomous driving ushered in a blowout in 2021. The climax of its topic rose with Huawei's entry, although the Huawei car at that time was ridiculed in the PPT stage, but with the entry of various giants, technical capital continued to precipitate, and today's automatic driving track has a kind of "extremely eye-catching, no fireworks" meaning.
In addition to new players, old players are also developing steadily, for example, on November 25 this year, the "Beijing Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policy Pilot Zone Autonomous Driving Service Commercialization Pilot Management Implementation Rules (Trial)" was released, Baidu and Xiaoma Zhixing became the first batch of enterprises allowed to carry out commercial pilot services. The country's first pilot for the commercialization of autonomous driving travel services was implemented in Beijing, marking the transition of domestic autonomous driving from test demonstration to commercialization pilot, and autonomous driving officially entered the "second half".
The entire industry has entered the "large-scale development", while the infrastructure for automatic driving into the "fast lane" has been completed, on the one hand, the provinces and cities have actively promoted the progress of computing centers, 5G, edge computing, vehicle-road collaboration, high-precision geographic data, unmanned vehicle road testing and commercial practice, on the other hand, all kinds of L2-L4 level autonomous vehicles have begun to walk out of the closed road test field, embarked on the real urban road, no longer just toys in the laboratory, with practical significance.
The "autonomous driving" industry under the scale effect has been preparing to run to the "fast lane" to develop.
03 Algorithms: The Methodology of the Machine, the Arm of the Platform
Scott Rush: In a society where media and code are ubiquitous, power is increasingly present in algorithms.
If the above technological developments are still in the ascendant stage, the algorithms that have become the "infrastructure" of the Internet industry have officially encountered strong supervision this year. In September this year, nine departments, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, said they would build an algorithm security supervision system to crack down on algorithm-related violations of laws and regulations.
In recent years, algorithm-related topics have frequently caused everyone to discuss hotly, in the takeaway platform, "takeaway riders, trapped in the system" let us see that in the pursuit of "pragmatism" algorithms, the rider's life safety and other powers have become the part that can be allowed to ferry; the information content field information personalization algorithm strategy construction "information cocoon" is also a cliché; the online car industry, according to the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Protection Commission survey, more than half of the online car is counted more kilometers, and there are also different mobile phone discounts in the online car" "Or the phenomenon of killing.
Algorithms have become the best helper for platform profits, and at the same time, they have become an obvious part of the squeezing of ordinary individuals. Ogburn once proposed the concept of "cultural lag", which means that governance always lags behind the problem, but after the problem is highlighted, legislation and special actions often go hand in hand, and algorithms will be strictly regulated while helping the platform expand its power.
In 2021, the technology boom is rising and falling, [Tidal Business Review] selected three representative keywords to point and point, but also represents the combination of technology and capital of the three important nodes, from the beginning of the frenzied influx, to the medium-term tide receding, and then to the maturity of the regulatory period to better adapt to the pace of social development.
At the same time, we also see that behind the continuous development of new technology tracks by capital is also a signal of the transformation and development of the overall Internet industry, and today's Internet market needs a new story, and long-term technology accumulation will also open up a new situation.
Technology as a tool has always helped society move in a better direction, but as Nicholas Carr said in The Glass Cage, when technology becomes our own extension, we also become the extension of technology. So especially when capital creates an outlet for technology, we need to be vigilant about whose hands this "tool" is in, and what can it bring us?
Business, on the other hand, is both a result and a process.
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