In the metaverse, you feel with other people, just like dancing and fitness in reality. The difference is that this experience cannot be done on a 2D application or web page.
--mark Zuckerberg
Technology should be used to enhance these core human experiences, not replace them.
At the end of June, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg announced an ambitious new initiative to his employees: the companys future will go far beyond the current Internet social application and some social application hardware. s project.
The simple understanding of the measures announced by Zuckerberg is that he wants to do a big thing, which has an ambitious goal, far exceeding the current projects.
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▲NVIDIA launched the Omniverse platform to create a metaverse virtual interactive world like the Oasis of Player One
When the words metaverse and world come out, dont you feel grand and exciting? I have to say that Robot-Zuckerberg really has a way of mobilizing the emotions of the people who eat melons. It feels like he really wants to subvert the real world and create a virtual world like The Matrix.
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01 Bigger Ideas
What I think is most interesting is how these themes fit together into a larger idea, Zuckerberg said in a remote address to employees. Our overarching goal in all of these initiatives is to help bring the metaverse into Life. Facebooks divisions focused on communities, creators, commerce, and virtual reality products will turn more of their energies toward the Metaverse in an effort to make that vision a reality.
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▲Neil Stephenson, the world depicted in the science fiction novel Avalanche
Earlier in July, The New York Times discussed Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeneys Fortnite, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and other works, and the reason for discussing these works is that They feature more and more metaverse-like elements (commander Tim Sweeney has been talking about his desire to contribute to the metaverse for months).
Meanwhile, in January 2020, venture capitalist Matthew Bauer also published an influential article on the Metaverse, which identified key features of the Metaverse, including: The Metaverse must span the physical world and virtual worlds; contain a fully fledged economy; and offer unprecedented interoperability. In summary: users must be able to transfer their avatars and merchandise from one space of the metaverse to another.
Were going to effectively go from people thinking were a social media company to a Metaverse company, Zuckerberg said in a speech titled Tagging in Metaverse. Watching his speech, we cant decide which is bolder: his vision itself or the timing of his choices.
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▲ Metaverse, a brave (new) virtual world
When talking about the bright future of the metaverse, we must also face up to some familiar and unfamiliar issues it brings, such as how virtual space is managed; how content is controlled; and its existence will affect our common sense of reality. what effect. Now that were still embracing 2D versions of social platforms, arguing about 3D versions can be exponentially harder.
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02 Not just virtual reality
In his talk, Zuckerberg discussed his vision for the physical internet, the challenges of governing it, and the gender imbalance in virtual reality today, which is why he focused on the Metaverse.
In his speech, when asked about Facebook’s criticism by the Biden administration some time ago, accusing it of failing to remove anti-vaccine content from headline news content, Zuckerberg also answered with a little connotation, “It’s a bit like being in a city. Fight crime, but no one expects you to completely solve the crime problem in the city.
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▲Metaverse world, feeling like being in a virtual world
Think of the Metaverse as a materialized internet. In this materialized Internet, you are not only as simple as viewing the above content, but also feel as if you are there. In the metaverse, you feel that you are with other people, just like dancing and fitness in reality. The difference is that this experience cannot be done on a 2D application or web page. Zuckerberg explained in the speech.
The Metaverse isnt just virtual reality. For many people, when they think of the Metaverse, they think of sci-fi titles such as Avalanche and Ready Player One, and they stereotyped that the Metaverse belongs to virtual reality. Having realistic themes as an impression is like remembering the word tiger. It is best to have seen a tiger in real life and be able to match the meaning of the word with the real tiger.
Of course, as an important part of the metaverse, virtual reality is also a port for Facebook to break through now. Virtual reality is a part of the Metaverse were very invested in because it provides the technology with the clearest form of existence.
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▲Retail Prophet, the combination of virtual and reality, shopping in the metaverse world
I think entertainment is obviously going to be a big part of the Metaverse, but I dont think its just games. Zuckerberg has his own take. He believes that the reason why most people associate the metaverse with games is mainly caused by the unconscious guidance and hints of external information.
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03 Ive been thinking about this stuff since middle school and just started coding
From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed, being able to jump into the metaverse and do pretty much anything you can imagine, Zuckerberg said of the metaverse.
This description above feels more like the Metaverse we’re familiar with from books like Player One or Avalanche, or perhaps like Fortnite today, where our lives, jobs, or some other important aspect are gradually becoming in virtual space.
I dont think its primarily about participating more in the Internet, I think its about participating more naturally. Zuckerberg understands the reality like this: With the mobile Internet today, you can access a lot of things from waking up to going to bed , before I put on my glasses in the morning, I reach for my phone next to my bed, just to check for a text message in the middle of the night, and if there is one, I immediately jump in.
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▲Space cooperation built by metaverse
Were used to being in a room with other people because theres a sense of space. If youre sitting on my right, it means Im sitting on your left, so we have some common sense of space. When you talk , the sound is coming from my right. It’s not like the screen is just coming from the same place in front of me.” Zuckerberg described his various online meetings.
In his work meetings over the past year, he sometimes has a hard time remembering what someone said in which meeting, because he thinks these people on the screen all look the same, they all blend together. For Zuckerberg, part of the reason for this is the lack of spatial presence in such meetings.
In Zuckerberg’s view, the combination of virtual and augmented reality can achieve this, and what the Metaverse can help people experience is a sense of spatial presence. This sense of spatial presence is much more natural in the way people interact, making the interaction more comfortable, richer, and more real.
He imagined that in the future, calls are no longer just simple voice communication, you will be able to sit next to me as a hologram, or I will sit next to you as a hologram, feeling like we are face to face in reality Communicate, even when separated by distance or hundreds of miles.
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▲The Rec Room party held by the Game Industry Club in Metaworld
It is a pity that he did not have enough mathematical knowledge to complete such an idea at the time, and it would take decades for the technology to truly mature. But such thoughts have always existed in his mind and stimulated him from time to time. For him, long before Facebook was founded, he thought it would be the holy grail of social interaction.
Asked again why he and Facebook are investing so much in augmented and virtual reality, he said that Facebook came along with mobile phones but didnt really play a big role in shaping the platforms evolution, in his From perspective, the platform didnt evolve in a very natural way.
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04 Integrity Issues and Challenges
With the Metaverse, Zuckerberg sees a different type of integrity problem.
One of the big things that people need to think about is that theres a very meaningful gender bias right now, at least in virtual reality, where there are a lot more men than women. Zuckerberg feels that in some cases, this leads to gender harassment.
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▲Metaverse world, Super World, everyone wants to rule the world
If a community is too skewed toward one gender or the other, it can upset the entire community population, and ultimately there wont be a healthy and vibrant community. These things are critical, not just for making a good social impact, but for building a great product.
The public has always been concerned about the new challenges brought by new things. This is an older problem, and new challenges arise even in our current 2D world of social media apps.
Developers have a bright side, but they rarely discuss, sit on the bench for a long time at the desk, and have to wait a long time before the problem is solved. Enjoy the process of research and exploration, which happens to be work in itself, Zuckerberg said, When we start to solve these problems and challenges, it takes a lot of time.
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▲Metaverse, virtual reality used as part of physical therapy after traumatic brain injury
Now we have built a lot of AI work, and we have hired a lot of content moderators. Zuckerberg believes that adding new use cases will make the systems they build more adaptable to different types of harm, and this is not something he said. With a flash of inspiration, the decision was made with a slap on the head, and it had been put into the consideration plan from the very beginning.
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05 Common Utopia
In order to have a cohesive society, you need to have a shared base of values and some understanding of the world and the problems we all face together.
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▲Nvidia, Roblox and Facebook are just one of the top companies chasing the metaworld
As far as Zuckerberg and his company are concerned, they are developing Quest headsets for VR and AR headsets. At the same time, software based on these builds can allow other people to work or hang out in it, and establish different metaworlds, just like Facebook or Instagram, even if other companies build VR or AR platforms, their software can exist in.
Zuckerberg likened that, just like the W3C, which can help set standards around a series of important Internet protocol standards and build networks, the metaverse also needs some standards to define how developers and creators build experience scenarios, so that people They can carry their avatars, digital goods and their friends seamlessly between these different experiences.
For Zuckerberg, it would be a meaningful thing to be able to build a set of things that work together and interact across borders, so that avatars, digital goods, etc. are not locked into specific platforms.
And now there are some institutions or companies doing such things, such as the XR Alliance. Of course, Zuckerberg is not far behind, and his company and Microsoft and some other companies combined are also doing such things. Although in this alliance, everyones joint vision may not be exactly the same, and some companies even have more isolated visions, but in his view, at least everyone has a common dystopian vision: believing that the Metaverse can truly be good. To function, hopefully the metaverse is portable and interconnected.
Every new evolution in technology poses a key question:Who will determine its value first and reap the greatest rewards, and who will scramble to catch up before its too late?
