Author: Peng Zhao (Founder & Cloud & Capital Partner, IoT Think Tank)
Guide
Metaverse, the meaning of the birth of the word may be greater than everything, greater than any interpretation of her. Metaversics is undoubtedly the master of subversive innovation, and I hope that metaversities can blossom everywhere and show her charm in all walks of life. So, I began to write this metaverse-themed book, and unlike in the past, this time you can join it together, in a detailed way at the end of the article.
Yuval Harari, the author of A Brief History of Mankind, said that human beings can become the king of all things because humans can accomplish some spectacular things through group cooperation, such as pyramid building and lunar exploration; all large-scale human activities are based on this group cooperation, and other species such as bees also cooperate in groups, but they cannot be compared with humans in terms of scale and flexibility.
Why is it that only humans can do it? Humans are good at group cooperation because they have evolved an ability that other species don't have, and that's imagination. Through this imagination, human beings construct a fictional reality that transcends objective reality. Nations, nations, currencies, institutions, human rights, and even beliefs are all fictions of human beings, and those who invent these concepts include wizards, religious leaders, lawyers, rulers, corporations, and so on. Humans live in a dual reality that contains both objective reality and fictional reality, and other animals live only in objective reality, which is the real reason why humans can rule the earth.
The birth of the metacosm has given us a new common imagination for human beings. In the age of great navigation, we slid the oars, opened up the unknown, and tapped into the huge market of globalization. Then, we began to explore space, facing a more magnificent star universe, we began a more far-reaching journey. Now, the metacosm allows us to see that in addition to the physical world composed of objective reality, there are vast virtual worlds, we can dream with our eyes, and another exciting era of exploration is coming.
Metacosm is the next generation of the Internet
Metacosm, a word that has rapidly become popular in the tech world, has a history of thirty years. Metaverse, or Metaverse in English, was first proposed by an American science fiction writer, Neil Stephenson, in his novel Avalanche. The novel was published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's other novels, it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.
In the original Chinese translation of Avalanche (translated by Guo Ze, Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing House, 2009), Metaverse is translated as "hyper-meta-domain", which reads: "He is in a computer-generated world: the computer depicts this world in his eyepiece, sends sound into his headphones, and in the jargon, this fictional space is called 'hyper-meta-domain'. ”
Avalanche caused a huge response as soon as it was published, and it has always enjoyed a high reputation in the American high-tech community. The novel Avalanche was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award in 1993 and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1994. With this book, Stephenson became a popular Futurist in North America, and worked as a futurist at Blue Origin and Magic Leap, which shows the influence of the novel.
There are many interpretations of the metacosm, the most concise statement is that the metacosm is the "next generation of the Internet".
Before we experienced two generations of the Internet, the first generation is the computer Internet, the second generation is the mobile Internet, and now the Internet has entered the third generation. In the third generation of the Internet, it is all-encompassing. Internet of Things, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality... They are all covered, so it is most appropriate to refer to them collectively as the metaverse. The metacosm is a synthesis of the latest technology.
In the era of computer Internet and mobile Internet, although each of us has a digital identity, digital identity is only an auxiliary to our real identity, and without digital identity, we can live as usual. But in the third generation of the Internet, we have gradually entered a new state of digital survival, where people are in a state where digital identity is equally important as real identity, and even digital identity is more important. Our behavioral data, the various digital values we create, will be linked to digital identities, and we will not be able to move without digital identities.
For example, during the epidemic, we use health codes to enter and exit various places, and to some extent, health codes are digital identity authentication formed by our travel trajectory, and losing the "green code" can be said to be a difficult step. With a health code, we can quickly build trust and confirm that the other person has not been to a high-risk area. This is another feature of the third generation of the Internet, adding a value dimension to the information. Two people who did not know each other before can quickly establish trust and social relationships through digital identity, and achieve low-cost, long-distance, real-time cooperation with each other.
Seeing this, you may ask: Since the metacosm was proposed in the 1990s, why did the metacosm not become popular until recently?
The metaverse has also experienced a cold winter
In the thirty years since its birth, people have never stopped exploring the metaverse. In the process, the metaverse experienced a nirvana rebirth. Just as Metaverse's original Chinese translation of "hyper-meta-domain" gradually faded from view, and the "metaverse" relay inheritance, Metaverse is making a comeback in a new posture.
Foreign discussions on the metacosm were earlier, and the earliest related discussion was the paper "How to Construct a Metacosm" published in the journal New Scientist in 1995. Meanwhile, in the early 1990s, futurists and businesses joined forces to create VRML, a virtual reality modeling language that promises to bring 3D graphics and virtual worlds into the web, heralding the dawn of the metaverse. But it didn't work out.
In the early 1990s, scientists and engineers predicted that virtual reality VR would provide new ways to visualize data as a new interface for interacting with computers. In late 1993, software engineers Mark Pace and Anthony Parris created the prototype of a 3D web browser. The term VRML was then coined, and the full name is virtual reality modeling language. VRML attempts to dynamically link to a virtual 3D world via the Internet, creating a metaverse in which people can chat, trade, learn, and shop freely.
At first, VRML only supported 3D static objects, but over time, VRML gradually supported avatars, animations, and multimedia objects, and was supported by dozens of companies such as Microsoft, Netscape, silicon valley graphics companies, etc.
Why is VRML not widely used? Although VRML version 2.0 became the ISO international standard, interest in VRML began to wane in 1997 because the world of 3D online was not as practical as people predicted. Us science and technology media analysis believes that VRML failed to meet expectations due to bandwidth, hardware limitations, and lack of application ecology. Computers were too slow to run complex VRML, and dial-up bandwidth was limited, and the loading time of websites was scratching their heads. Therefore, mainstream browsers have never integrated support for VRML, users must have a third-party plug-in or client to use, coupled with VR virtual reality headsets are expensive and impractical, no one wants to wear, let alone killer applications. As VRML faded from view, there was general disappointment with the metaverse, and some media even predicted that the metaverse might never appear.
The prelude to the industrial metacosm begins
Human exploration of the metaverse began before the metasecon concept was born. There are many years and names worth remembering along the way.
In 1926, Nikola Tesla conceived of a world of wireless connectivity. In his vision, the Earth would be transformed into a gigantic brain, and the devices that would achieve this would be simpler than telephones and small enough to fit easily into pockets. In 1945, Van Neval Bush described Memex, a "personal library" based on microfilm storage that could store a variety of books and documents and index them against each other. Twenty years later, the concept of "hypertext" was born. In 1964, Marshall McLuhan proposed a connected city as a complete information system. In 1966, Carl Stenbucher predicted that computers would be integrated into almost all industrial machines and products. In 1992, Neil Stephenson constructed a new world in the science fiction novel Avalanche called Metavalse. A new world born out of the real world, parallel to the real world, and always online, is slowly emerging in iterations. In 1999, Kevin Aston coined the term "Internet of Things" to describe the application of radio frequency identification technology in the supply chain...
2021 may be recalled as the first year of the meta-universe into reality. In March 2021, as the first company to write the concept of "Metaverse" into the prospectus, the sandbox game platform Roblox successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange, with a market value of more than $40 billion on the first day of listing, detonating the circle of technology and capital, and the meta-universe returned to the public eye.
Metaverse's prefix "meta" has the meaning of transcendence, the meaning of meta, which is reasonable to translate into hyper-meta-domain and meta-universe, but the latter can make everyone instantly realize that this thing is the creation of parallel worlds, it is a cosmic scale thing, and it may be all-encompassing.
As Companies such as Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Boeing have begun to lay out the metaverse, people have gradually realized that the connotation of the metaverse is still evolving. The metacosm is not a simple virtual world, and it and the physical world are not separated from each other, but intersect and merge. The coexistence and co-prosperity of reality and fiction is the mode of existence of the metaverse, and she is solving how to integrate the various identities of people and various things in the real world with the virtual world. The metaverse will eventually reach a state of virtual reality. The virtual world and the real world initially have a boundary, but the boundary between the two will become more and more blurred, and eventually become two sides of the same coin, interdependent.
The value of the metacosm is not to make us detached from reality and addicted to the virtual world, the metacosm needs to serve the real economy, serve the manufacturing industry, and serve the digital transformation of various traditional industries. Therefore, we need to promote the industrial metacosm and provide better digital support for the real world by building a virtual space that is completely open to the real world. In the future, we will no longer distinguish between traditional enterprises and innovative enterprises, because all enterprises will be digital enterprises.
This book will use the 5W2H analysis method to interpret the comprehensive and in-depth changes that the industrial metacosm will bring to us, as well as the questions that arise in the process of change:
- Why→ Why do we need an industrial metacosm? (See Chapter 1)
- What→What is the Industrial Metacosm? Two important properties of the industrial metacosm: safety and zero carbon (see Chapters 2, 6, and 7)
- When→ Industrial Metaverse Arrives? (See Chapter 3)
- How→ how to build the industrial metacosm? What are the key technologies? (See Chapters 4 and 5))
- Where→ How to apply the industrial metacosm in various industries? (See Chapter 8)
- How→ How to Profit from the Industrial Metacosm? (See Chapter 9)
- Who→ Who's doing the Industrial Metacosm? (See Chapter 10)
How do you "write a book" with me?
The writing process of the book "Industrial Metacosm" I hope to "open source". It is expected that I will code words at a speed of about 2,000 words per working day, and you can search for the content of this book through the WeChat public account of Mirror.xyz and "Wunu Heart Sutra".
At the same time, you can also leave comments and feedback on the "Flying Book" at any time through the following link, and put forward any suggestions and changes to the contents of the book (copy the link below to open it to add comments):
https://bcymk0m3ma.feishu.cn/docs/doccnNkkWIOFc7bzs5pSReAu0th
I hope that this time, we can witness and advance together from the beginning of the development of the industrial metacosm.
Previous serials (click on the title to view):
- "I wrote a "novel" of the industrial metacosm, welcome to participate together ~"