Time Magazine's Big Cover: The Metaverse Era Will Change the World

Metaverse - The next digital era will change everything.

This is the cover of the latest issue of Time magazine.

What does the metaverse mean to society as a whole? What is the future development like?

The metaverse changes everything

As the metaverse appears more and more frequently in the public eye, the concept of the metaverse It seems to have become an unavoidable topic for various technology companies.

Facebook changed its name to Meta to officially incorporate the concept of the Metaverse into the company’s future development.

In addition, giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Tencent have also begun to make efforts to lay out the metaverse, reorganize their internal employee structures, and re-plan product designs.

According to McKinsey & Company estimates, Yuanverse-related investment in the first five months of this year has reached US$120 billion.

#So what exactly does the metaverse bring us?

For ordinary people, there are no goods available for purchase in the Metaverse, nor any income brought by it. This concept seems to come and go, and is illusory.

But it really exists. This idea that has been brewing for a century is quietly changing the world around us.

If we hope to build a better future, we must be as active in shaping it as those who invest in building it.

What should the future look like?

Imagine the metaverse world as a "parallel virtual world". It spans all digital technologies and will even control the physical world.

Take the Internet of the 21st century as an example. Although the Internet is widespread and powerful, it is not designed for real-time and interaction involving a large number of participants. Built for innovative experiences, especially when it comes to 3D imaging.

We cannot predict the impact of 3D Internet on the global economy in advance, just like we did not know its value when the Internet first appeared.

But we can get a glimpse of the future from the development trends of the times.

The Metaverse is the next generation of 3D Internet. This would help explain why building the Metaverse is so difficult, but certainly worth it.

As internet connections and computer processors have improved, we have moved from colorless text to raw web pages and web blogs, then to online profiles (like Facebook pages) and video-based Social networks, emojis and filters.

The amount of content we produce online has gone from a few message board posts, emails, or blog updates each week to a steady stream of streaming content.

And the next era that evolves with this trend is a "living virtual world". It is not a window for us to share life updates, such as Instagram, nor is it a window for friends to communicate Information platform (such as Gmail), but an environment in which we truly participate and integrate.

In addition, industries such as education, medicine, and infrastructure construction will also be redefined.

Let’s look at the medical field first.

In 2021, Johns Hopkins neurosurgeons performed the hospital's first live patient surgery using an augmented reality headset, giving surgeons a view of the patient's internal anatomy. Interactive display.

Dr. Timothy Witham performed the surgery. He compared AR glasses to a doctor having a GPS.

Look at the education industry.

For example, Stanford will launch a course on the metaverse in the summer of 2021.

The 263 students who chose this course spent more than 200,000 minutes together in the Metaverse participating in live discussions, performing musical skits, etc.

#And these common scenes will be replaced by more realistic and simpler ways in the metaverse environment.

Hong Kong Airport has begun integrating "digital twins" into its infrastructure, which can guide passengers and aircraft routes by creating 3D real-time simulations.

It is not clear what the Metaverse actually means to society. Some people regard the Metaverse as the "fourth era" of computers and networks - the first three eras being the mainframe era, the PC and Internet era, and today's mobile and cloud era.

Services such as Facebook, Netflix or Amazon’s AWS cloud computing platform may seem obvious and natural results today, but the business models, technologies and design principles of these companies were at that time. It is the product of "deviant".

We should acknowledge that chaos and uncertainty are prerequisites for disruptive innovation.

A billboard in Times Square reads during the 4th Annual NFT.NYC Conference in New York on June 20, 2022 "Unlocking the Metaverse".

From a cognitive perspective, the Metaverse is often mistakenly equated with immersive virtual reality headsets, such as Meta Quest, or Google’s augmented reality glasses. VR/AR devices may become the preferred way to access the world of the Metaverse, but they are not the same as the Metaverse.

Games are far from the entire metaverse. The metaverse is not "Roblox", "Minecraft", "Fortnite" or any other games. These virtual worlds or platforms Likely to become part of the metaworld, just like Facebook and Google are part of the internet.

Another common conceptual confusion is between the Metaverse and Web3, encryption and blockchain. These three may be important components in realizing the potential of the Metaverse, but they are merely principles and techniques, not the Metaverse itself.

Education The Metaverse has actually always been what we have been looking forward to. However, the reality seems to be unsatisfactory.

On the one hand, this model may consume more resources than the traditional method; on the other hand, when education is moved online, we will lose many key points s things. For example, close contact between people, eye contact, opportunities for hands-on experiments, etc.

Perhaps the thing in the Metaverse that resonates most with the public is video calling.

Earlier in 2021, Google released the Project Starline device, which uses machine learning, computer vision, a dozen depth sensors and cameras, and multi-layered light field displays to create 3D holographic video without the use of XR glasses.

Infrastructure is another good example. Hong Kong International Airport now runs a real-time "digital twin" of the facility, allowing airport operators to use real-time 3D simulations to determine where passengers and aircraft should be directed.

Billion-dollar, decades-long city projects are using these technologies to determine how a particular building may affect traffic flow and emergency response times, or whether its design will These are mostly incoherent simulations of how to affect the temperature and sunlight in a local park on a given day.

The next step is to bring them online—like moving from offline Microsoft Word documents to cloud-based, collaborative documents—turning the world into a digital development platform.

The Metaverse should not be thought of as a complete overhaul of the internet, nor should it be thought of as something that will replace all mobile models, devices, or software. It will generate new technologies and behaviors, but that doesn't mean we have to abandon the things we love. I still write on a PC (personal computer), which is probably still the best way to write long text.

Most Internet traffic today is originated and terminated on mobile devices, but nearly all traffic is carried over fixed-line cables and uses the 1980s Designed for the Internet protocol suite.

We are in the mobile era today, but the first cellular network was in 1973, the first wireless data network was in 1991, and the smartphone was in 1992, all the way up to 2007 The iPhone appeared.

Although it is unclear when the development of the metaverse began, it is obviously developing steadily. In mid-2021, just weeks before Facebook unveiled its plans for the Metaverse, Tim Sweeney, CEO and founder of Fortnite developer Epic Games, tweeted about the company's 1998 game Unreal pre-release code.

And "Unreal" may be an earlier metaverse.

Who will take control?

2021 is the first year of the Metaverse.

In March, the sandbox game platform Roblox went public, and its market value soared to US$40 billion, making it the first stock in the Metaverse.

What is unexpected is that Zuckerberg actually announced at Facebook’s annual Connect conference on October 31:

Rename Facebook to Meta and go all out to the metaverse.

At the same time, at the conference, Xiao Zha introduced some application scenarios of Horizon Home and revealed a new product called "Project Cambria" VR headsets are in development.

Following Meta, Microsoft officially announced its entry into the Metaverse at the Ignite conference on November 2 and launched the mixed reality conference platform Mesh.

This latest platform allows people to meet and interact through virtual avatars, as well as share Office files, etc.

In addition, Nadella said that the Xbox gaming platform will also join the "Metaverse" in the future.

It is worth noting that after Nadella announced Microsoft’s full-scale entry into the Metaverse, the company’s market value directly exceeded 2.5 trillion US dollars, surpassing Apple and becoming the largest market value of listed companies in the world!

On November 9th, Nvidia launched its own virtual image Toy-Me at the GTC conference, as well as the all-powerful Avatar platform, further proving that the full layout of the Metaverse is unstoppable.

On November 10, Unity spent US$1.6 billion to acquire Weta, the special effects company behind "Avatar".

In 2021, especially in the second half of the year, global technology giants will intensively set sail on the metaverse track to accelerate the layout of the metaverse.

In 2022, these giants have not slowed down.

In early January, Microsoft announced the largest acquisition in history, buying the gaming giant Activision Blizzard for US$68.7 billion. This acquisition will also be an important boost for Microsoft in the process of building the Metaverse.

Until now, each company is making some contribution to the advancement of the Metaverse. However, we can find that there is no unified consensus on the future of the Metaverse.

Similarly, there are no mature Metaverse products on the market, and there is no revolutionary change in experience.

The development of the Metaverse still needs a long way to go.

As Matthew Ball mentioned in Time’s cover article,

The metaverse will reshape our lives, let’s make sure it does become better.

Author Introduction

It can be said that Matthew Ball is a professional in the Metaverse.

Time Cover This article was written by Matthew Ball.

What really made him famous was an article he published on his personal blog in January 2020: The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find It, and Who Will Build It.

## Article address: https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse

Although this article did not attract many people’s attention subsequently, after the epidemic, the Metaverse suddenly became popular, making this article known to more people.

Matthew Ball is not only a writer, but also the managing partner of EpyllionCo, responsible for operating the early-stage venture fund and corporate and risk advisory departments. He is also a partner of the Makers Fund, the world's largest gaming venture fund. Served as global head of strategy for Amazon Studios.

In addition, he has columns in the New York Times, The Economist and Bloomberg, and is the world's earliest and most comprehensive introduction to the "Metaverse" "Professionals".

In June 2021, Matthew Ball authored the "The Metaverse Primer" series of books, which provided an in-depth interpretation and analysis of the Metaverse from 8 perspectives.

Based on this book, Matthew Ball's new book "The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything" was officially published on July 19.

Interested friends can also read the latest works of Matthew Ball.

Perhaps you can gain deep insights into the Metaverse.

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