On December 6, 2021, three Crew members of Shenzhou 13 aboard the Chinese space station waved to students on Earth as they lectured. (Visual China/Photo)
For the Chinese science fiction community, 2021 is a year worth going down in history.
On December 18, 2021, Beijing time, six years after the first "Shen Fantasy" defeat, China (Chengdu) finally won the right to host the 2023 World Science Fiction Convention. This means that "the dreams of generations of Chinese science fiction fans will be realized", when the 81st Hugo Awards will be awarded in Chengdu, China.
Science fiction literature is literature about the future. In the 2021 Southern Weekend N-TALK "Literature Night" science fiction session, science fiction writers Jiang Bo, Xia Di, Tan Kai, Wang Jinkang and Han Song jointly imagined "tomorrow's humanity". Some argue that the virtual humans that evolved in the metaverse will become a new form of future humans, and that the concept of "humanity" may be redefined; some lament that twenty years ago, it was metaphysical to explore whether artificial intelligence would catch up with humans, and now "the worries of the past have become reality."
In 2021, the great changes in the future of life are conceived in the seemingly unchanging daily life. Under the metaverse boom, people throw money to buy a piece of land in the virtual world and "put themselves" in a concert in the game world. Human digital doppelgängers arrived in daily life before the metaverse itself: new girl groups launched by entertainment companies, anchors with goods on the traffic field, news anchors with 24-hour uninterrupted broadcasts, and there may be a piece of code behind them.
The "future" unfolds before us like never before.
Go live in space
In 2021, daily life and "home" break free from gravity and move into space. In the past, this was a futuristic imagination, and now the "future" shines into reality.
On October 16, 2021, the Shenzhou 13 manned spacecraft was successfully launched at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu formed a "space trip trio" and entered the Chinese space station. In the space "station", the three astronauts are required to perform missions in orbit for six months, spanning the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger in the lunar calendar. Some netizens quipped: "Can other space stations come to visit the door?" ”
Even if suspended in the universe, the astronauts' daily lives are still full of "grounding". Zhai Zhigang, an astronaut nicknamed "Cosmic Terrier King" by netizens because of his humorous interviews in the early years, ran and exercised like walking on the ground in a widely circulated space daily video, while not forgetting the entertainment life, chasing the drama "The Right Way in the World is Vicissitudes", which can be called an immersive space life reality show. The video of Ye Guangfu cutting Wang Yaping's hair in the space capsule has attracted wide attention and praise, and some netizens have nicknamed the three astronauts as "space washing and blowing team".
When the "space business trip" was one month old, Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping, and Ye Guangfu sent a video reading aloud in space for the CCTV variety show "Readers" in a space station about 400 kilometers from the ground. In the video, three astronauts relay an excerpt from the general sequence of Barkin's "Riptide": "Life is a 'fight'. What do we live to do? Or why should we have life? Romain Rolland's answer was 'to conquer it'. I think he's right..."
In space, being a travel vlogger is also a good option. In September 2021, in the first space Vlog released by the China Manned Space Engineering Office, Shenzhou 12 astronaut Tang Hongbo aimed his lens at the rotating Earth, passing through Beijing, Tianjin, the mouth of the Yellow River and the Jiaodong Peninsula at high speed.
Classrooms can also be brought to space. On December 9, 2021, Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu "feel good" multiplied to demonstrate the "buoyancy disappearance experiment", "water film tension experiment" and "water balloon optical experiment" for students on Earth. The standard weightless environment, the teaching video presents a magical phenomenon: the ping-pong ball that is pushed into the water cup cannot float to the surface, and the water balloon is enlarged by the bubble after the effervescent tablet is thrown into the water balloon.
On the first day of 2022, the first space painting exhibition was held on the Chinese space station. The theme of the exhibition is "Youth and Starry Sky Dialogue". Long Xinyu, a child in the eighteen-hole village of Huayuan County, Hunan Province, sat in front of the TV and watched Wang Yaping introduce his work "Martians to earth". In the painting, Long Xinyu fantasizes that the Martians will come to their planet and start the journey of the gods.
A metaverse under construction
In 2021, the concept of the "metaverse" popular in various discourse fields first appeared in the science fiction work "Snow Crash". In 1992, the American science fiction writer Neal Stephenson proposed the "metacosm" in this science fiction novel, which is a virtual world that acts as a mirror of the real world, and people can virtually enter a virtual world simulated by a computer as long as they wear headphones and eyepieces.
People's interest in building, excavating and exploring virtual worlds is not a new topic. In the movies "The Matrix" and "Ready Player One", there are already "matrix worlds" and "oases" similar to the metaverse. However, the classic red and blue pill choice in The Matrix , the ethical question of whether to choose the virtual world or the real world — seems a little far away. At present, the metacosm is still in the infrastructure construction stage.
Creating a virtual world requires a technical bonus. In November 2021, the Shenyang team of the New Media Research Center of the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University released the "2020-2021 Meta-Universe Development Research Report". The report believes that the metaverse is mainly based on the following core technologies: the expanded reality technology represented by AR and VR to provide immersive experiences, the digital twin technology that can mirror the real world to the virtual world, and the blockchain technology used to build the metaverse economic system.
In a well-built metaverse, people can play games, listen to concerts, socialize, and even buy land to build houses through their virtual avatars. Facebook changed its name to "Meta" in 2021 and opened its own VR social metaversy platform Horizon Worlds at the end of the year. Baidu also released its own meta-universe platform "Xi'an" at the end of the year, in which players can either visit the Shaolin Temple or dig treasure in Sanxingdui. However, both metaverse platforms have been complained about for poor experience due to technical reasons. Metaversmic platform construction seems to have a long way to go.
At the end of 2021, a concept video of Jay Chou's concert appeared on the meta-universe platform Sandbox (The Sandbox). In the video, Jay Chou's virtual doppelganger sits on the stage and plays the piano and sings "Can't Open the Mouth", and the audience waved glow sticks, and the atmosphere was warm. However, the overall production of the video is indescribably beautiful. In Europe and the United States, virtual concerts have become a reality. In April 2020, American hip-hop singer Travis Scott hosted his own virtual concert in the game Fortnite, which attracted 12.3 million viewers. In the cross-Chinese New Year's Eve 2022, Tencent Music created a virtual music carnival TMELAND, where users can create their own avatars, visit the park and listen to idols singing at TMELAND.
In the second half of 2021, capital set off a boom in speculative housing in the meta-universe. Zheng Zhigang, CEO of Hong Kong's New World Development Group, bought one of the largest digital plots in The Sandbox for about 32 million yuan. Singer Lin Junjie announced on social platforms that he had purchased three virtual plots of land on the Decentraland platform at a cost of about 780,000 yuan.
The popularity of NFTs in 2021 has also boosted the construction of the meta-universe economic system. NFT (Non-Fungible Token), full name "non-homogeneous token", is a string of unique code attached to digital assets, because the code has immutable characteristics, which helps to confirm the rights of digital assets. In March 2021, artist Leng Jun burned an ink painting called "Hsinchu" on the spot, and the scanned version of the painting was made into an NFT and sold for 400,000 yuan. The disappearance of the physical painting means that the NFT corresponds to the full interest of Hsinchu, which belongs to the holder in the form of a digital asset. On October 9, Wong Kar-wai's NFT work "A Moment of Fancy Time" was sold at Sotheby's for HK$3.4 million. "Fantasia : A Moment" is a plot clip filmed on the first day of the movie "Fantasia" but not exposed, with a duration of 1 minute and 31 seconds.
"Business" is hard, no rest, no "collapse"
In 2021, a branch of the metaverstem system, the virtual human as a digital twin of humanity, ushered in a spurt of development. The virtual idol industry is a red sea, high-fidelity wind, realistic style, cartoon rendering style virtual idols take turns, the track is constantly subdivided.
At the beginning of 2021, the virtual idol Ling of the national style appeared on the stage of the CCTV variety show "Go Online, Huacai Youth" and performed the Meipai Peking Opera "Tiannu Scattered Flowers". In the program, Ling said: "Mr. Mei's "Heavenly Girl Scattered Flowers" has entered the imagination of posterity, and the imagination of posterity has created me. In February 2021, China's first virtual singer Ji Luo Tianyi appeared on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the tenth year of her debut, performing the song and dance "Listen to Me" with Sister Moon and Wang Yuan. At the beginning of 2022, the virtual person of the late singer Teresa Teng Lijun appeared on Jiangsu Satellite TV's New Year's Eve Party and sang "The Story of a Small Town" with singer Zhou Shen. The surprising scene occurred in the variety show "Future New World", relying on the increasingly mature motion capture technology, Teresa Teresa virtual person and the guests of the show chatted and laughed.
Looking back on 2021, idol "collapse" incidents have emerged in an endless stream, and cooperative brands have been hit hard. In this context, virtual idols that will never "collapse" have become a safe choice for fans and commercial brands. In 2021, Lehua Entertainment launched the first anniversary of its first five-person virtual idol girl group A-SOUL. Backed by the existing promotion model of the entertainment agency, A-SOUL released original singles, did small theater performances, and broadcast live online. On platforms such as Weibo and Station B, it has rapidly accumulated millions of fans and generated considerable revenue, and in September 2021 alone, the revenue generated by live broadcasting on Station B reached 1.17 million yuan.
The metacosm is seen as an important position in the Web 3.0 era. Many Internet manufacturers have also begun to lay out virtual people. Ali's "hyper-realistic digital person" silver-haired girl AYAYI has a superb appearance, and as soon as the Little Red Book was launched, it received huge attention. AYAYI's entry into Alibaba means, to some extent, the advent of the era of virtual idol marketing. In the field of live streaming with goods, a number of virtual people have broken into, "Luo Tianyi" and "Wolf Brother Simon" have tested the water of live streaming with goods, and the number of viewers has exceeded one million.
In addition to the beautiful, cute and exquisite appearance, the attraction of virtual idols lies in personality, character and story line. On October 31, 2021, virtual idol Liu Yexi was launched on Douyin, and then quickly rose to become an Internet celebrity with more than 8 million fans. Liu Yexi is known as "a beauty artist who can catch demons" and has the ability to travel back and forth between the metaverse and the real world. However, Liu Yexi is not a real intelligent virtual person, and her image shaping relies more on CG technology and dynamic capture in film and television production. The incubation company behind it, the founder of Chuangyi Technology, analyzed the reasons for Liu Yexi's popularity in an interview with the media: "50% is because of the concept of the meta-universe, 30% is because of its 2.5-dimensional setting and technical level, and 20% is the construction of video creativity and world view." ”
At the beginning of 2021, Baidu Research Institute released the top ten technology trend predictions for that year. It is mentioned that in 2021, "digital people and virtual people will be applied to the Internet, finance, e-commerce, medical and other industries on a large scale, bringing customers professional and intimate services with thousands of faces." At the same time, the media industry will also usher in many AI virtual anchors."
This prediction becomes a reality in 2021.
The Daily Economic News's "Per AI TV" has created a 365-day, 24-hour uninterrupted live broadcast of global financial information on the whole network, and the 24-hour working system once raised questions about whether netizens violated labor laws. It was not until seventy days after running that the anchor revealed that the highly humanoid and fluently expressed anchor in front of the screen was actually the anchor's digital twin virtual person. The 24-hour live video is also not recorded by human anchors in advance and then played.
"Everything you see, including the text I'm talking about, is generated and driven by ai Xiaoice frameworks." With the opening of the Winter Olympics just around the corner, CCTV has also added an AI sign language virtual anchor to provide sign language support when broadcasting Winter Olympic news and live events.
Virtual Olympic Games
In 2021, sporting events are more technological and futuristic than ever. "Glory and Dreams" edited by science fiction writer Bao Shu contains eight competitive sports science fiction works, and the Olympic Games written by science fiction writers continue to ripple in reality.
Twenty-four years ago, science fiction writer Wang Jinkang fictionalized Xie Baofei, a young Chinese-American in his science fiction short story "Leopard". Because of the gene embedded in the cheetah gene, Xie Leopard Fei broke the world record with a score of 9.45 seconds. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, 100-meter flyer Su Bingtian set a new Asian best in the 100-meter semi-finals with 9.83 seconds. However, Su Bingtian's breakthrough is not because of "genetic" technology, but thanks to scientific training methods.
Science fiction has always conceived of "black technology" in competitive sports: in Chi Shuchang's novel "The Secret of Swimmer No. 3" (1956), Swimmer No. 3 broke the world record by applying fish lubricant; the early morning novel "The Last Paralympic Games" tried to modify the physical genes of injured athletes to make them successfully participate in the Olympic Games; Zheng Wenguang wrote in his 1979 science fiction novel "Women's Volleyball No. 7", imagining the story of a simulated robot to play volleyball competitions...
In 2021, the first virtual Olympic Games will open, including baseball, cycling, rowing, sailing, and racing. The picture shows the Olympic Virtual Series GT racing car on May 13. (Visual China/Photo)
The imagination of a "simulated robot" participating in the Olympics may seem far away, but at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, robots have become a landscape: the Tokyo Olympic mascot "miraitowa" is a robot whose name can be split into "mirai" and "forever (towa)". In the athletics field, which has been empty due to the epidemic, the field robot can recover the discus and other competition supplies thrown by athletes at a maximum speed of 20 kilometers per hour.
One of the ideas Liu Cixin gave at a gathering of science fiction writers about "the future sports competition of 'science fiction'" was a space marathon. "Athletes compete in space, each carrying a small thruster, driven by the athlete's physical strength to drive a pump, the propellant is pressed out of the spout, the stronger the physical strength, the higher the outlet speed of the propellant, the higher the acceleration. The shortest time to fly the full range wins. ”
In 2021, the first "virtual Olympic Games" in human history opened. The IOC works with individual sports federations in baseball, cycling, rowing, sailing and motorsports, as well as game publishers, to encourage virtual sports and eSports enthusiasts around the world to participate in the Virtual Olympic Games.
In 2021, China's e-sports ushered in a brilliant moment - China E-sports Club EDG won the league of legends global championship. According to iResearch data, as early as 2020, the number of e-sports users in China has reached 500 million, jumping to become the world's largest e-sports industry market.
The concept of the "metacosm" has been extended to the field of esports. Today, to enter online games, players still need to sit in front of the desktop computer and use the mouse and keyboard to manipulate the character's rebirth indefinitely. In the future, with the blessing of technologies such as VR/AR/somatosensory devices, the future form of e-sports events may further subvert people's cognition.
Southern Weekend reporter Pan Xuan