Biography
Tu Zipei
Big data expert, science and technology writer, CEO of Digital Civilization Technology (Guangdong), former vice president of Alibaba Group, deputy to the 15th and 16th Guangzhou Municipal People's Congress, member of the Guangdong Provincial Digital Government Committee, special expert of Zhejiang Province, visiting professor of the School of Politics and Public Affairs Management of Sun Yat-sen University, director of Zhuhai Isjia Technology Co., Ltd., independent director of People's Network and Guangdong Guodi Technology Company. In 2020, he was awarded the China New Economy Leader and the China AI (Artificial Intelligence) Jinyan Outstanding Achievement Award. He graduated from the Department of Computer Science of Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a bachelor's degree, and graduated from Sun Yat-sen University and Carnegie Mellon University with a master's degree in public administration and a master's degree in information science.
Opening remarks: The construction of digital government is an important support for promoting the modernization of governance capabilities and an inevitable choice for high-quality economic and social development, and the revitalization of data resources is the key to the construction of digital government. Southern Metropolis Daily and Nandu Big Data Research Institute launched a series of special topics to interview data open practitioners, governance standard makers, data security escorts, data legislation drafters, digital government construction practitioners, etc., and mined innovative measures for data applications, explored areas with excellent digital governance capabilities, and took "30 people interviewed as a guide, taking 20 city cases as a lesson", and committed to presenting "new data actions" in the new era, and composing a new chapter in digital wisdom. At the same time, for the national enterprises and institutions, scientific research institutions, etc. to collect excellent cases of data application (please send information or clues to the mailbox [email protected]), we will organize relevant authoritative experts in the field of big data to interpret and evaluate the cases, and conduct more in-depth interviews to achieve wider promotion and application.
The metacosm concept is on fire. Recently, the metaverse has appeared many times in the proposals of the members of various provinces, municipalities and districts, proposing to preemptively lay out the development of the metacosm, and suggesting that the government accelerate the top-level design. Many local governments and enterprises hope to seize the microcosm, which is the outlet of digital economic development, promote the integration and development of artificial intelligence with green, low-carbon, intelligent manufacturing, etc., and create a new highland for the digital economy. Data and computing power are key elements of the metaverse. So, what exactly is the metacosm? What role will data play in the digital virtual world? How to realize the value transformation and circulation of data? Why is data in the metaverse wealth? What about building digital government and digital life in the metacosm? To this end, Nandu interviewed Tu Zipei, a big data expert and science and technology writer.
A Digital space is an extension of the real space, not the source of the physical reality space
Nandu: Recently, there are many experts on the Internet talking about metacosm, some say that metacosm is a virtual world that parallels the real world and digitizes the real world, and some say that metacosm is data space. What exactly is the metacosm?
Tu Zipei: Since the second half of last year, the concept of meta-universe has caught fire and entered the lives of more and more people. Simply put, the metacosm is a digital space or data space. Metaverse technology advocates believe that human life, trading, social interaction, etc. will increasingly migrate to the digital space, so that in the digital space to form a world that completely corresponds to the physical world, that is, the metacosm.
However, I am not advocating calling this space or future technology a metacosm. Because in Chinese vocabulary, the meta is the meaning of "initial", and the universe also has the meaning of "origin", we can easily find that the digital space is an extension of the real space, rather than the source and root of the physical reality space. From this point of view, this space should be called digital space or data space. But there are also people who believe that on the basis of digital twins, there will be some things in the future digital space that are not available in the real world, they believe that digital space is richer than physical space, there are more people, there will be some "digital native people", that is, completely virtual people generated by algorithms, and people in digital space can live forever. Based on these understandings, I do not advocate the use of metacosmological names, we can call the space based on the digital twin as the digital space or data space, and the space where virtual people exist is called the "second-order digital space" or "higher-order digital space".
At present, we are still far from a meaningful "second-order digital space", and many cities are building urban brains. The city brain brings together all the data in the city, but this task is not yet complete. The data generated by many cities has not been used well by the government, enterprises or individuals, and has not been analyzed well. The physical world is the foundation, and we must make good use of these real data resources first.
B The rules of business in the digital space will be reshaped, and some transaction patterns will change
Nandu: In the digital virtual world, how to realize the value transformation and circulation of data? Where does the data for the metaverse come from? What role does data play?
Tu Zipei: In the digital space, data should circulate and value be transformed, how to achieve it? Taking digital art collections as an example, we know that if you have a collection of 3D digital files, that is, digital artwork, in fact, this 3D digital file is easy to copy, just like ordinary data documents, pictures, the copy cost is very low, almost no money can make countless copies, how to protect its value? There is also an important foundation for the second-order digital space, which is the base of the blockchain, which is used to make a unique identity through the blockchain to prove its uniqueness.
Moreover, this uniqueness is not simple, how to explain? Because it is a digital work of art, stored on the blockchain, there is an identity, ownership. As an original, he can modify the digital artwork after it has been sold and still be collected by someone else.
In simple terms, this uniqueness and scalability provides new and different ways of collecting digital collectibles. In physical space, you want to collect a vase, or someone wants to imitate a vase, and the cost is very high. Although the cost of imitating a vase in the digital space is very low, the use of blockchain prevents this imitation from occurring, and imitation becomes meaningless. In physical space, a vase, after you sell it to someone else, it is impossible for you to modify it again, but digital space offers artists new possibilities, and it is still possible for the work to be collected by others. This is the difference between digital space and the physical world, which gives us a lot of room for imagination. Compared with the physical world, the digital space will reshape the rules of business, and some transaction patterns will change.
Whether it is a metacosm or a second-order digital space, it is a purely artificial, man-made world, which is different from the real world. Our real world should be said to be semi-artificial, living in the city has cement, steel, glass, dirt, flowers, trees, etc., which is the result of our transformation of the surface of the earth, but the metacosm, the second-order digital space, is a completely artificial world, it has only one element, the only resource is data. There is also an invisible element, which is the algorithm that works on the data.
We survive in the metaverse, and every breath is data. We're ingesting data, and we're generating new data. A photo, a digital artwork, a movie, a letter, and so on, these are all data. To say what role data plays in the metaverse, I feel that data is the air in the metaverse, the light in the metaverse.
C Metacosm is a data community "book with text, car with track, number with norm"
Nandu: Data in the metaverse is wealth, and everyone in it will become a data center node. How to understand? How do we personally get wealth or cash returns from data? How to strengthen the protection of data and protect user privacy in the metaverse?
Tu Zipei: The data in the metaverse is wealth, how do individuals get wealth or cash returns from data? In the second-order digital space, it is entirely possible, like the digital collectibles transaction just mentioned, is your data. On today's internet, other people use our data, we don't know, right? If placed on the blockchain, it is identified, and we know that others want to use our data, and we need our authorization and consent. On the basis of authorization and consent, others need to give us cash or bonus returns.
As for how to strengthen the protection of data and protect user privacy, this is a big topic. In the digital space, there are rules, and privacy protection is one of the most important rules, just like many rules in the physical world. In the digital space, there are more such protections, and we call the technologies developed by this protection "privacy computing" or "multi-party secure computing" and so on. In simple terms, it is our personal core data information, such as ID card numbers, which may be used in the cloud, but do not need us to share it, that is, in the process of use, it is not permanently occupied by the other party, and it is available invisible and unobtainable.
Nandu: "Data unification" and "efficient interaction", as the basic requirements of the metaverse, will inevitably conflict with the "data" regulations between the first to enter the regions, how to solve it?
Tu Zipei: "Data unification" and "efficient interaction" are data unification, I call it "data community". The world data community starts from the city, and now, we are building a city data community, with the city as the unit, and then we have to build an industry data community, as well as a national data community, and then a world data community. A simple principle is that we want to interconnect data within a city, data within an industry, data within a country, and then data around the world.
The basis of this interconnection is the common rule, that is, "the book is the same text, the car is on the same track, and the number is the same rule". All walks of life, all cities, and all countries will have a process of "number and regulation", that is, a unified standard for data. However, the realization of this process is not a year or two, it takes 10 years as a unit, and may even take 50 years, 100 years to complete. We can expect that the process is very long, but the goal of the World Data Community will be achieved one day.
Producer: Nandu Big Data Research Institute Digital Government Research Center
Coordinator: Ying Zou Researcher: Yuan Jiongxian