On June 20, 2022, Zhiku No.150 (total issue 262) and "Metaverse and Future Media" book sharing meeting, Weicao Zhiku invited Yu Guoming, distinguished professor of "Changjiang Scholars" of the Ministry of Education and director of Academic Committee of School of Journalism and Communication of Beijing Normal University, to share "Metaverse: Deep Media of Society". Peng LAN, professor of Journalism School of Renmin University of China, Shen Hao, professor of Communication University of China, and Liu Xingliang, president of DCCI Internet Research Institute participated in the comments. The following is arranged according to Liu Xingliang's speech.
Thanks to Yu Guoming for your wonderful sharing. Let me talk about three things.
First, what exactly is a metaverse?
At the end of 2021, a media interview asked me: "Mr. Liu, is the metaverse old wine in a new bottle?" Because he feels that everyone has put cloud computing, blockchain, Internet of things, AR/VR and other concepts into it. Is this old wine in a new bottle? I said no, not old wine in a new bottle, but old wine in an old bottle. Is Zuckerberg these big guys in the garage sale to find such a 1992 called the meta universe bottle, and then fill rice wine, white wine, cocktail, rice wine, fruit wine, wine... . So it's a story of old wine in old bottles.
I particularly agree with Professor Yu Guoming that the metaverse is not a technology, nor an application, nor a scenario. It may be a synthesis, or a Medici effect, a combination of technologies that brings about unexpected changes.
The Medici effect was in Florence, Italy, in the 15th century. Several families led by Medici financed many artists, painters, writers and architects. In a short period of time, they all concentrated in Florence, resulting in various chemical reactions, and then the Renaissance. I think the metaverse is the same way. Whether it is foreign Facebook, Microsoft, or domestic Tencent, ByteDance, they might have been equipped with cloud computing, big data, Internet of things, blockchain, AR/VR and many other technologies. It is a Medici effect that a combination of technologies can bring unexpected changes within a company or within a specific scope.
Second, what is the relationship between the metaverse and Web3.0?
In my opinion, Web3.0 is a technology base, and the metaverse is a way of life running on the technology base. From a media perspective, I think Web1.0 to 3.0 can be described in one word respectively. Web1.0 is Read (readable), like the portal websites, electronic newspapers, we can only look at; Web2.0 is Write, and most of the mainstream applications used today are products of the Web2.0 era; Web3.0 is Own.
For example, the earliest representative of the Web2.0 era is Sina blog, which is now only visible to the author, but not to most people. My Sina blog is no longer accessible, there are two or three thousand articles in it, before 40 to 50 million visitors, all the data is gone, only in the past system. Does Sina blog belong to me, or to Sina? If it was mine, Sina shut it down without my consent. For example, do moments belong to me or wechat? If the circle of friends belongs to me, then those circle of friends advertising is not to give me a share? That's the problem with our media of the past.
As a content creator, I think this acre of land is mine, but the food I toil so hard to produce in this acre does not belong to me. In addition to me as the author, there are many participants. For example, I post an article, and others click on it and post comments. Are these likes and comments valuable? Even the comments may be more valuable than the articles I post, but all this content has spawned a lot of the big Internet platforms that are getting bigger and bigger and more profitable, but the authors don't make any money from it.
Finally, in 1995, Bill Gates was interviewed on David Letterman's show. When he explained what the Internet was, he couldn't explain it clearly, and anything he said would provoke ridicule from David and the audience. What can the Internet do? Bill Gates said we could watch a baseball game online. Letterman said, isn't that just a radio? Bill Gates said we could save it and look back. Lightman says it's just a videotape, right? He keeps giving examples of what we have. He can't understand them. So not just in the early days of the Internet, but from 1995 to now, we actually have a lot of ways that were thought to be unreliable, but that are changing our lives.
So why are we talking about the metaverse?
I think what we're really talking about is a change, an opportunity for the future of humanity. When the future arrives, it may not be called the metaverse or web3.0. It may be called the bird universe. It doesn't matter what it is called, what is important is that we should be keenly aware that there is such an opportunity, there is such a future, everyone in such a future, can be combined with their work, study and life. Who combines well, who is likely to get more opportunities.
Of course, there will be many problems in the process, but some problems that seem to be problems now may not be problems in the future. For example, what Penlan mentioned will occupy our "physiological bandwidth", which may still exist today. In the future, when the virtual and real are combined, it will become a kind of infrastructure, like air, which will not be able to acquire more worries voluntarily.
What exactly are we talking about when we talk about the metaverse?
I think I should talk more about the trend of change and what the future might look like.