THIS TIME BELONGS TO ME
PROCESS BOOK Here And There Yi Zhu Grad Thesis Spring 2022
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Hello there, le
Here An 2
et us exploring
nd There 3
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PROCESS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION Thesis Statement
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FINAL DELIVERABLE Thesis Logo
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Pop Up Book
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Ceramic Bridge
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Ideology Series
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Cloud Series
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Electric Paint
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Mirco Exhibition
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RESEARCH Metaverse Prequel
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Metaverse Commerce
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Metaverse Disadvantage
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Design Category
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PROCESS Pop Up Series
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Ceramic Series
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Painting Series
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Exhibition Series
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Second Process
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CREDIT Referrences Collection
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MORE EXPLORING THE METAVERSE, MORE APPRECIATIN WE HAVE IN THE RE
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NG WHAT EAL WORLD.
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THESIS STATEMENT
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THESIS STATEMENT Metaverse is a new type of Internet application and social form that integrates a variety of new technologies. It provides an immersive experience based on extended reality technology, generates a mirror image of the real world based on digital twin technology, and builds an economic system based on blockchain technology. The virtual world and the real world are closely integrated in the economic system, social system, and identity system, and each user is allowed to carry out content production and world editing. We are living in an era where dreams are progressively turning into the world. A couple of years ago, people could have thought the idea of digital world ridiculous, but today they seem to be the quality very soon. With the rapid development of technology, there is a lot of talk about the Metaverse as our future, which creates huge expectations of what it might be and do for us as humans. And the world is becoming digital-based. Because of the mixed reality is happening now. The infinite fusion of real world and future technology makes the future unknown and fascinating. In this process, people need a channel to continuously explore and understand the meaning of the metaverse.
New generations and especially designers often work in between digital and reality, so we readily accept new technologies and the possibilities of this future, but those outside of these realms cannot see what we see. How can we as a designer to help those people to join this stage of future? IMetaverse will make a closer relationship and form a new multi-dimensional lifestyle of virtual and real is going to be most influential to people who are out of the stage. It will help them understand that Metaverse will not replace social relations in reality, but will give birth to a new type of online and offline social relations. Which is urgent at this time because this is the most meaningful to embrace the technology to help people to achieve what they can not be done in real world. This study aims to show how Graphic Design can build a bridge of understanding metaverse. By designing and developing a working example of such practices, I plan to uses real-world objects and simple digital interface to illuminate something of how the Metaverse works.but also in the graphic areas. I am interested in the subject of graphic design’s role in Metaverse, because we can be both in reality and the digital world, exploring form the reality to the virtual. No matter in the virtual world or the real world, designers are always play the important roles to help to view the world. Also, the new technology always comes with many risks. Designers need to use our abilities and skill to try our best to better the future world.
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INTRODUCTION
However, no matter what the advantages of the Metaverse, some of us are hesitant. I believe that the responsibility of designers is help those people to have a chance to know and join this kind of new style of future. However, right now the metaverse industry ecosystem is in a sub-healthy state. Since the metaverse industry is still in the initial stage of development, it is reasonable to have the immature and unstable characteristics of emerging industries. The future development not only depends on technological innovation, but also requires institutional innovation including formal and informal institutional innovation. Designers need to work together to achieve the healthy development of the industry. I believe that the Graphic Design is the bridge of understanding metaverse, and help everyone to see what new generation see. Metaverse is a valuable future trend. And it is the word combine by “Meta” and “Universe” I plan to find how to combine the beauty of reality and the infinity of the future to form a perfect possibility. My exploration into the Metaverse not only of the digital design, but also with the pop up book, electric poster and decoration. “Cloud” will be an important elements in my design, not only because it is ethereal and untouchable, but also because it represents storage space, data interaction, and so on in the Metaverse. Here & There: a micro-exhibition that uses real-world objects and simple digital interface to illuminate something of how the Metaverse works. Out of the digital space, Bring another perspective to perceive and understand through 2.5D, rotating pop-up books, luminous posters, ceramic that fits conscious thinking, etc. The pop-up book briefly explains what a digital twin is in a virtual world, and showcases the accessibility, infinity, and playability of virtual worlds through various widgets.Through a variety of materials, such as pottery, clay, wax, acrylic, quartz sand, cotton, etc., to give artistic works a three-dimensional effect and combine with flat works to express my ideas. Combining painting with wired lighting, art meets technology. Hanging clouds, soft and tactile, bring the impossible touch to the real world. Interactive web pages serve as another accessible and easy way to get people involved and learn about Here & There. Use the virtual tour to explore the 3d space of Here & There. The content of the micro-exhibition can also be experienced by those who cannot be there. The web page takes people back to the digital world and learns how the simple metaverse works in the process of interaction. In general, the metaverse is an ongoing future trend that people inevitably discuss and gradually join this new era.
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I AM THERE YOU ARE 12
I AM THERE YOU ARE 13
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FINAL DELIVERABLE
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THESIS LOGO
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DELIVERABLE
3D LOGO
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LOGO & WORDS
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DELIVERABLE
LOGO & WORDS
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POP UP BOOK
Summary Using the laser cut to create the surface of the pop up book. Simply explain the digital twin which is a virtual representation that serves as the real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process. Also what a person lacks in the real world will make efforts to compensate in the virtual world; when possible, he will realize the compensation in the virtual world in the real world.
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DELIVERABLE
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Design can build a bri 26
idge of understanding. 27
THE BRIDGE
Summary New generations and especially designers often work in between digital and reality, so we readily accept new technologies and the possibilities of this future, but those outside of these realms cannot see what we see. The shape of the bridge is also fits the logo which guide people from reality to the virtual. It's not an easy path, but we're all constantly exploring.
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THE IDEOLOGY
Summary Six pieces of the ideology show the floating ideology that fits the human body. The ever-changing shapes repesents the flow in an ever-exploring virtual world. New technologies always have opponents. In the exploration of the metaverse, some people strongly support it, and some people criticize it as a liar. Shapes indicate support and opposition
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CLOUD LIGHT
Summary “Cloud” will be an important elements in my design, not only because it is ethereal and untouchable, but also because it represents storage space, data interaction, and so on in the Metaverse. The cloud is untouchable in the reality, but the hanging cloud lights are soft and tactile, which bring the impossible touch to the real world. 36
DELIVERABLE
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THE CLOUD
Summary A cloud shape ceramic. The perfect round cloud which represents the combine all of the different opinions from the people. No matter what the advantages of the Metaverse, some of us are hesitant. The new technology always comes with many risks. Designers need to use our abilities and skill to try our best to better the future world.
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CLOUD CANDLES
Summary Five senses If the metaverse wants to achieve a qualitative leap, it must solve the problem of the five senses. Vision, hearing and touch are all addressed. Now the technical difficulty is moving towards the sense of smell and taste. Use cloud-shaped scented candles for a real-world olfactory experience
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ELECTRIC PAINTING
Summary Combing the painting with the wired lighting which let the art meets the technology. Seasons change, sunrise and sunset, ordinary life will always bring extraordinary chagnge.
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MICRO EXHIBITION
Summary A micro-exhibition that uses real-world objects and simple digital interface to illuminate something of how the Metaverse works.
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DELIVERABLE
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EXHIBITION POSTERS
Summary A micro-exhibition that uses real-world objects and simple digital interface to illuminate something of how the Metaverse works.
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THESIS RESEARCH
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PREQUEL
METAVERSE
AVATAR BACKGROUND The story opens in Los Angeles in the 21st century, an unspecified number of years after a worldwide economic collapse. Los Angeles is no longer part of the United States, since the federal government has ceded most of its power and territory to private organizations and entrepreneurs. Franchising, individual sovereignty, and private vehicles reign supreme. Mercenary armies compete for national defense contracts, while private security guards preserve the peace in sovereign, gated housing developments. Highway companies compete to attract drivers to their roads, and all mail delivery is by hired courier. The remnants of government maintain authority only in isolated compounds, where they do tedious make-work that is, by and large, irrelevant to the society around them. For the first time the metaverse concept be discussed is in 1992, Neal Stephenson mention the Metaverse in his novel “snow crash”. Snow Crash mention the concept of metaverse and avatar. The plot in the book takes place in a future setting where a real human lives in a virtual space with a virtual human through a VR device.
The Metaverse, a phrase coined by Stephenson as a successor to the Internet, constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality–based Internet might evolve in the near future. Resembling a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), the Metaverse is populated by user-controlled avatars, as well as system daemons. Although there are public-access Metaverse terminals in Reality, using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the poor visual representations of themselves as low-quality avatars. Status in the Metaverse is a function of two things: access to restricted environments such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club, and technical acumen, which is often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar.
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PREQUEL
THE FIRST PHENOMENON LEVEL VIRTUAL WORLD Released in 2003, it has stronger world editing functions and a developed virtual economy system, attracting a large number of enterprises and educational institutions. The development team said that it is not a game, "there are no conflicts that can be created, no human-set goals" in which people can socialize, shop, build, and do business. Also,IBM bought real estate in the game and established its own sales center.
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MILLIONS The game has its own money "Linden Dollar", which can be exchanged for legal currency at a certain exchange rate. Game user Anshe Chung bought and sold virtual real estate and earned one million US dollars in real assets in two years, becoming the first millionaire in the virtual world.
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PREQUEL
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META + UNIVER ES 66
ATEM + EVINU RSE 67
EMBODIED IN
USER GENERAT
ECONOMIC
UNIFIED I 68
FUSIONOFVI
NTERACTION
TED CONTENT
C SYSTEM
IDENTITY
IRTUALREAL
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EXPANSION OF THE DIMENSION OF HUMAN SURVIVAL AND SENSORY
REAL WORLD
VIRTUAL REALITY
SYNTHETIC ENVIRONMENT
REALISTIC VISION HEARING TOUCH
VIRTUAL VISION HEARING TOUCH
SYNTHETIC SENSE 71
VIRTUAL REALITY COMPEN SATION THEORY 72
What a person lacks in the real world will make efforts to compensate in the virtual world; when possible, he will realize the compensation in the virtual world in the real world.
L Y N-
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TECHNIC BASE OF THE METAVER 74
CAL
RSE
WEB VIRTUAL
ENVIRONMENT REALITY
INTERFACE
DATA
PROCESSING
AUTHENTICATION
MECHANISM
CONTENT
PRODUCTION
WEB VIRTUAL
ENVIRONMENT REALITY
INTERFACE
DATA
PROCESSING
AUTHENTICATION
MECHANISM
CONTENT
PRODUCTION
WEB VIRTUAL
ENVIRONMENT REALITY
INTERFACE
DATA
PROCESSING
AUTHENTICATION
MECHANISM
CONTENT
PRODUCTION
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5G
Cloud computing
Application scenario
Application scenario
For XR devices to achieve true immersion, higher resolution
Cloud storage, cloud computing, especially cloud rendering: At
and frame rate are required. Therefore, it is necessary to explore
present, large-scale games adopt the client + server model, which
more advanced mobile communication technologies and video
has high requirements on the performance of client devices and
compression algorithms. The characteristics of 5G, such as high
the carrying capacity of the server. In particular, the complete
speed, low latency, low energy consumption, and large-scale
rendering of 3D graphics depends on terminal computing . In order
device connection, can support a large number of application
to lower the user threshold and expand the market, it is necessary
innovation needs of Metaverse.
to separate computing from display and complete rendering on the cloud GPU. Therefore, a cloud computing system that dynamically
Development trend
allocates computing power will become Yuanzhou's infrastructure.
At present, 5G-based "heavyweight applications" have not yet appeared, and the market demand and penetration rate are not
Development trend
high. With its rich content and strong social attributes, Metaverse
NVIDIA Omniverse, EpicCLoudgine,Microsoft, Azure, Amazon AWS
may open the gap in 5G public demand and increase the coverage of 5G networks.
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COMMERCE
Expand reality, robots, brain-computer interfaces
Application scenario VR provides an immersive experience, which realizes the input and output of information in the meta-universe by fully taking over human vision, hearing, touch and motion capture. AR superimposes a layer of virtual information on the basis of preserving the real world.MR can realize partial retention and free switching between virtual and real by projecting a light field on the retina. Development trend Oculus currently occupies a dominant position in the VR industry, and Qualcomm's XR2 platform has become the only chip solution. With the strong support of Apple's developer ecology, AR technology has produced a large number of excellent products. MR is a standard proposed by Microsoft, and the product is HoloLens. Metaverse is expected to inject vitality into XR Aviation with UGC content ecology and break the bottleneck of its lack of content.
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Artificial intelligence
Digital twin
Application scenario
Application scenario
Significantly improve computing performance. Intelligently
Digital twins are dynamic twins that create real things in virtual
generate massive content that is not repeated, realizing the
space. With the help of sensors, the running state of the body and
spontaneous organic growth of the metaverse. AI-driven virtual
external environmental data can be mapped to the twin in real
digital humans present the contents of the metaverse to users in
time. The technology was originally applied in the field of industrial
an organized manner. Review the massive content in Metaverse
manufacturing. Metaverse needs a digital twin to build a realistic
that cannot be completed manually to ensure the safety and
environment with extremely rich details and create an immersive
legality of Metaverse.
experience.
Development trend
Development trend
In order to achieve the greatest freedom in the metaverse,
DuMixAR, UINO, Gartner, Cyberverse, 51World
artificial intelligence technology needs to develop from traditional decision trees and state machines to more advanced deep learning and reinforcement learning, thereby creating a randomly generated, never-repetitive game experience, free of artificial scripts The limitations of the game allow players to explore and create freely.
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COMMERCE
Blockchain
Application scenario The virtual currency based on the decentralized network makes the value attribution, circulation, realization and authentication of virtual identities in the metaverse possible. It has the advantages of stability, high efficiency, transparent rules, and certainty. In addition, NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) has natural collection properties due to its unique, non-copyable, and inseparable characteristics, so it can be used to record and trade some digital assets, such as game props, artwork, etc. Development trend Non-Fungible token
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SUMMARY OF METAVERSE DEVELOPMEN CHINA AMERICA JAPAN SOUTHKOREA
F
COMMERCE
NT
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A FOLLOWER OF IDEAS A BROAD MARKET A PIONEER IN THE CONCEPT IS IN THE FOREFRONT OF INVESTMENT ACG INDUSTRY HAS DEEP ACCUMULATION AND RICH IP RESOURCES GOVERNMENT-LED IDOL INDUSTRY-DRIVEN 81
∞
AT PRE THE MET INDUSTRY E IS IN A SU STA
Since the metaverse industry is still in the initial stage of development, it is reasonable to have the immatu
innovation, but also requires institutional innovation (including formal and informal institutional innovation). W
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DISADVANTAGE
ESENT TAVERSE ECOSYSTEM UB-HEALTH ATE
ure and unstable characteristics of emerging industries. The future development not only depends on technological
Work together to achieve the healthy development of the industry
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Capital
Manipulation
Public Opinion Bubble Ethical Monopoly Industry Algorithmic
Tension Involution Pressure
Economic
Risk
Addiction
Risk
Privacy
Risk
Intellectual 84
Constraints
Property
There are still many uncertainties in the metaverse in the embryonic stage, and both the industry and the market urgently need to return to rationality.
The irrational public opinion bubble echoes the irrational stock market turbulence.
How to build a consensus on the ethical framework of the metaverse in a decentralized framework still needs to be explored from multiple perspectives.
The competitive situation among the giants determines the relative closedness of their ecology, and it is difficult to achieve complete openness and decentralization.
The conceptual breakthrough did not fundamentally change the current state of industrial competition.
How to ensure the stability of cloud computing, low-cost computing resources and many other issues remain to be resolved.
Economic risks may be transmitted from the virtual world to the present the real world.
Excessive immersion in the virtual world may also exacerbate psychological problems such as social fear and social alienation.
Individual private data, as the underlying resource supporting the continuous operation of the meta universe, needs to be continuously updated and expanded, and the compliance collection, storage and management of data resources are yet to be discussed.
Multi-agent collaboration and adaptation applications that cross the boundary between virtual and real are likely to cause property rights disputes.
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The theoretical framework of the meta-universe The path to the meta universe: immersion vs. superposition (VR) People become more and more introverted, and the entire civilization becomes more and more introverted. ...We are becoming more and more an introverted civilization, rather than a civilization that explores and explores outward. ——Liu Cixin Immersive path: VR, virtual digital person (immersive interaction, mimic companionship) Superimposed path: AR, simulation robot The path to the meta-universe: progressive vs. radical Progressive path: "Fortress Night" uses a traditional game model to attract users, and on this basis, it continuously adds social, economic and other meta-universal elements. Radical path: "Roblox" does not provide games from the beginning, only provides a development platform and community, attracts users with creative incentive mechanism, and realizes a decentralized world created entirely by users. The path to the meta universe: open vs. closed Once we give up our self-perception and control of the nervous system and give it to those who "try to rent our eyes, ears and nerves for profit" for private manipulation, we are a pauper, a pauper without any rights. Renting out our eyes, ears, and nerves to make money for others is as ridiculous as "letting a private company teach you how to talk daily" or "giving the atmosphere of the earth to a company's monopoly." --McLuhan The virtual world must remain open and must develop in open standards like the Internet. You don't want a closed system like Facebook, iPhone, Android or Twitter because they will lock you in their closed system. They will monitor what you are doing, and they want to draw commissions from every transaction you make and sell your private information to the highest bidder. People have been tricked into these closed systems. But next time, we need something open. What we want is not a company, but an agreement that anyone can implement. —— Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Closed path: Horizon, the meta-universe game ecology; Oculus, the manufacturer of virtual reality headsets under Facebook. Open path: Epic Games And The Metaverse The physics of the meta-universe: selective liberation On the one hand, the meta-universe realistically simulates a part of the time and space regulations in the real world, and on the other hand, it transcends and liberates a part of the time and space regulations in the real world. Players sometimes need to move by simulating actions such as walking, running, and jumping in the real world, and sometimes they can fly or perform instant geographic migration. It is this selective liberation that brings a sense of freedom. The geography of the meta universe: AI generation, user participation Meta universe has a huge geographic space for users to choose and explore. One development direction is to generate maps that are not available in the real world by AI. The other is to generate a map that is completely consistent with the real world by means of a digital twin. 86
ARTICLE Meta universe is an open and editable world where users can buy/lease land, build buildings, and even change the terrain. The superposition of meta-universe and real geography can produce a large number of virtual and real fusion scenes. The Affair of the Metaverse: Flow, Transformation and Relevance LogicThe Psychology of the Metaverse: From Cognition to Identification Interaction and cognition: The somatosensory interaction method brings the embodied cognition of the environment. Sense of security: the avoidance of uncertainty, the establishment and maintenance of order. Sense of presence: "hands-on" state. Identity: Travatar (traveling avatar) The tension of identity within the virtual world, the tension between virtual identity and real identity. Sense of fairness: a sense of distribution fairness, procedural fairness, interactive fairness, and a sense of hierarchy brought by quantitative attributes. The ethics of meta universe: many risks need to be supervised by legislation Platform regulations + violent machines: currency supervision, reputation system, content review, digital personality protection, marriage and reproduction, reward and punishment system, voting and democracy, digital asset protection, inheritance. Risks: rumors, violence, gambling, economic fraud, capital speculation, privacy leaks, terrorism, extremism, capital exploitation, dark web crimes. The value of the meta universe The meta-universe does not mean a post-scarcity society. Analysis from absolute scarcity (objective limit) and relative scarcity (man-made limit): Relative scarcity and scarcity from the virtual world: tickets for non-external scenes, props, costumes, information, virtual landscapes, virtual labor. Relative scarcity and scarcity from the real world: social relations from reality, commercial advertisements, political propaganda, co-branding with real IP, live games, krypton gold, twins of real landscapes. Absolute scarcity and scarcity from the virtual world: ranking, geographic space (land, social scene), social relationship. Absolute scarcity and scarcity from the real world: user time and attention (including the most watched big V in the game), distributed computing power. The source of value of the meta universe Participation: Participation is exclusive, scarce, and the life of the product, and user participation itself is the most precious value. Land economy: the natural scarcity of geographic space + the agglomeration effect of industries, a small number of areas concentrate most of the user activities, and the land value of Meta Universe is highly differentiated. Avatar image: All experiences in the meta-universe revolve around the user's avatar. The avatar image is an important way for self-presentation and self-identification in the metauniverse. The avatar image will become a field that attracts much attention from capital. 87
Scenario-based social interaction: timely communication to scenario-based social interaction, from the pursuit of efficiency to the pursuit of experience. Sharing time and space, real-time interaction; diversified gameplay fully activates the scene and enhances the enthusiasm of strangers to socialize; time and space are scarce, and tickets for different social scenes will have the value of social circles. The construction of multi-dimensional space-time of the meta universe Shenyang proposed the three-dimensional space and virtual space-time tunnel in 2007. Connecting several enclosed virtual spaces that are separated from each other can form a larger virtual community space. Connecting multiple virtual community spaces can form a larger and more diverse virtual social space. Currency, attributes, environment, events and other information can be mapped to each other between heterogeneous space and same-degree heterogeneous space, so as to realize information jump and the shuttle of virtual time and space. This model has a wide range of application scenarios in games, social networking, exhibitions, education and other fields.
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ARTICLE What the metaverse will (and won’t) be, according to 28 experts It may not be entirely random that 2021 was the year that people started talking seriously about the metaverse. During the pandemic, so many things have gone digital by necessity— from socializing to shopping to work—that it sometimes felt as if we were halfway into a metaverse already. Actually we’re not there yet, or even close. Defined loosely, the metaverse is an all-digital layer of reality that floats above, around, and throughout the features of the real world–or, in some definitions, is entirely separate for it. Author Neal Stephenson is most often credited with inventing the concept in his dystopian novel Snow Crash. But the metaverse of Snow Crash was partly satirical, and partly dystopian, and, with any luck, not where we’re headed. Ernest Kline’s Ready Player One presented a metaverse (“the OASIS”) that was escapist and nostalgic. The metaverse concept clearly means very different things to different people. What exists right now is a series of embryonic digital spaces, such as Facebook’s Horizon, Epic Games’ Fortnite, Roblox‘s digital space for gaming and game creation, and the blockchain-based digital world Decentraland–all of which have clear borders, different rules and objectives, and differing rates of growth. To get a broader read on this diversity of opinions we asked thought leaders from a variety of disciplines and industries a simple two-part question–What will the metaverse look like, and how will it be used? Their answers provide a clearer picture of what the metaverse may turn out to be–and what it probably won’t be. A FEW DEFINITIONS TIFFANY ROLFE, CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, AT THE GLOBAL BRANDING AND MARKETING FIRM R/GA AR so far seems to be the simplest way to transition us into the metaverse. But we’ll continue to see attempts to push more into VR with headsets . . . and once we are comfortable wearing our powerful phones over our faces, it’s game over. Or rather, game on. There will be different layers of realities that we can all be experiencing, even in the same environment or physical space. We’re already doing that with our phones to a certain extent—passively in a physical environment while mentally in a digital one. But we’ll see more experiences beyond your phone, where our whole bodies are fully engaged, and that’s where the metaverse starts to get interesting—we genuinely begin to explore and live in these alternate realities simultaneously. RONY ABOVITZ, FOUNDER, MAGIC LEAP I believe that the Xverse will be a wild, organic, and amazing outgrowth of what we think of today as the internet and web. When you see images and diagrams of the internet today, it looks like a biologic construct, full of neuron-like connections and the emergence of proto 89
life. No one entity will control the Xverse (or should), although many will try. It will have legacy parts that look and feel like the web today, but it will have new nodes and capabilities that will look and feel like the Ready Player One Oasis (amazing gaming worlds), immersion leaking into our world (like my Magicverse concept), and every imaginable permutation of these. I feel that the Xverse will have gradients of sentience and autonomy, and we will have the emergence of synthetic life (things Sun and Thunder is working on) and a multitude of amazing worlds to explore. Building a world will become something everyone can do (like building a webpage or a blog) and people will be able to share richer parts of their external and inner lives at incredibly high-speed across the planet. [Abovitz once called the metaverse the “Magicverse,” but now calls it the “Xverse,” arguing that Neal Stephenson didn’t mean for his term from Snow Crash to describe the shared digital spaces of the future] MATTHEW BALL, CEO OF VENTURE CAPITAL AND ADVISORY FIRM EPYLLION INDUSTRIES: The brilliant thing about platform changes of this magnitude is its unpredictability. We can say blanket statements like participate in an AR world, spend more time wearing VR headsets, and own more virtual goods. But innovation is recursive. Some brilliant technology is created which inspires more innovation, leading to new behaviors, unlocking new use cases. Suddenly, something no one thought we needed–like a persistent, real-time rendered simulacra of the world – will feel essential. No amount of Internet speculation in the 1990s would have led to you to TikTok remixes on the Billboard 100, r/WallStreetBets and YOLO options, or Bored Apes Yacht Club. [Ball wrote a series of influential essays about the structure, technology, and possible directions of the metaverse.] YAT SIU, COFOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OF GAMING AND BLOCKCHAIN COMPANY ANIMOCA BRANDS Reality will exist on a spectrum ranging from physical to virtual (VR), but a significant chunk of our time will be spent somewhere between those extremes, in some form of augmented reality (AR). Augmented reality will be a normal part of daily life. Virtual companions will provide information, commentary, updates and advice on matters relevant to you at that point in time, including your assets and activities, in both virtual and real spaces. These facets of reality will not compete, but instead will enhance each other. For example, VR will involve you in physical world activities, while products and events in the real world will direct you to virtual environments. These new technologies will require fundamental shifts in thinking. For example, today we see AR as a link to a virtual world, perhaps as a way to escape or enhance the physical world. But in the future, AR will serve as a pathway back to the real world, allowing users to take breaks from full virtual immersion–maybe to eat or exercise–without completely disconnecting. 90
ARTICLE TYLER ISHIDA, DEPUTY PRESIDENT FOR CONSUMER BUSINESS GROUP, SONY ELECTRONICS The metaverse may appear as real as ‘real life’ for those participating, thanks to the level of resolution and quality of today’s technology. It’s all pointing toward a more immersive entertainment experience that engages all senses, while staying true to the creator’s intent. I can see the consumer entertainment aspects of the metaverse becoming the main driver, and there are plenty of other applications I can easily picture: education and research, industrial, even IT and security. I know first-hand that we have the display, image, and key sensor technology available today, and other ways we can engage within the metaverse are coming online quickly. TIMONI WEST, VP OF AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY, UNITY: I think we can all agree our initial dreams of a fully immersive, separate digital world is not only unrealistic, but maybe not what we actually want. So I’ve started defining the metaverse differently to capture the zeitgeist: we’re entering an era where every computer we interact with, big or small, is increasingly world-aware. They can recognize faces, voices, hands, relative and absolute position, velocity, and they can react to this data in a useful way. These contextually aware computers are the path to unlocking ambient computing: where computers fade from the foreground to the background of everyday, useful tools. The metaverse is less of a ‘thing’ and more of a computing era. Contextual computing enables a multitude of new types of interactions and apps: VR sculpting tools and social hangouts, self-driving cars, robotics, smart homes. DR. HELEN PAPAGIANNIS, AUGMENTED STORIES, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF AUGMENTED HUMAN Vision is just one aspect. It’s important to extend our thinking beyond what will it “look” like to what will it “feel” like, “sound” like, “smell” like, and even “taste” like. It will be possible to experience the metaverse with all of our senses and being. Today, each of the senses can be used to heighten immersion in virtual experiences by mirroring reality; however, the opportunity also exists to apply the senses in alternative ways that are in contrast to what we may experience in physical reality. This opens up a new gateway of possibilities, including even creating new senses. SAM HAMILTON, HEAD OF COMMUNITY & EVENTS FOR BLOCKCHAIN-BASED METAVERSE CREATOR THE DECENTRALAND FOUNDATION We can expect self-contained virtual social worlds but also service layers and tools that unlock opportunities for creatives and entrepreneurs that the physical world can’t or won’t provide. It will be immersive and all-encompassing, but at the same time impact the physical world across finance, goods, and services, play, education, governance, and more. What it won’t be is a centralized experience. A centralized metaverse is not a metaverse, it’s a video game. A curated entertainment. You can’t empower creators and residents of the metaverse to shape 91
its future without giving them ownership and the right to govern. So, the authentic metaverse will be a shared, collaborative space, backed by a decentralized structure. We are witnessing world-building as it happens. The old rules don’t apply. NITZAN MEKEL-BOBROV, CHIEF AI OFFICER, EBAY It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that without AI, the metaverse won’t exist; as carbon is to the organic world, AI will be both the matrix that provides the necessary structural support and the material from which digital representation will be made. Of all the ways in which AI will shape the form of the metaverse, perhaps most essential is the role it will play in the physical-digital interface. Translating human actions into digital input–language, eye movement, hand gestures, locomotion–these are all actions which AI companies and researchers have already made tremendous progress on. Understanding what a physical object is in order to represent it digitally starts with its correct identification, the beginning of which we already see in current computer vision applications. HUGO SWART, VICE PRESIDENT AND GM OF XR, QUALCOMM Qualcomm views the metaverse as an ever-present spatial internet complete with personalized digital experiences that spans the physical and virtual worlds, where everything and everyone can communicate and interact seamlessly. People will access the metaverse through any computing device–smartphone, PC, AR/VR device, etc.–as a portal to a virtual presence that mirrors aspects of real life. In the metaverse, unlimited users and businesses can explore, create, socialize, and participate in a wide variety of communities, daily experiences and economic activities in 2D and 3D. RAINE MAIDA, SINGER, OUR LADY PEACE The ability to have a secondary existence in a virtual world has already been adopted by my kids. Not only can they outfit their avatar with the Air Jordans they can’t get in the real world, they have the opportunity to exchange ideas, creativity, emotional intelligence, and ultimately dream with billions of people instead of being victim to real world barriers such as socioeconomics, borders, and language. This planet requires balance to sustain. It just may be that the metaverse provides another essential component of balance for humanity. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? CAROLINA MILANESI, PRESIDENT AND PRINCIPAL ANALYST, CREATIVE STRATEGIES The metaverse could be anything from a form of escapism as alternative reality that is fun and engaging to an absolute hell where the current problems Facebook is facing with misinformation and abuse will feel way more real. First and foremost it will be used by Facebook to further monetize on consumers. IBRAHIM BAGGILI, FOUNDING DIRECTOR, CONNECTICUT INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 92
ARTICLE AT UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAVEN As an active researcher in the security and forensics of VR systems, should the metaverse come into existence, we should explore and hypothesize the ways it will be misused. We have already shown through our research, practical security weaknesses in VR as it lends itself to new types of immersive attacks like our discovered Human Joystick Attack and the Man-InThe-Room attacks. In one attack, we can control the movement of a person in VR without their knowledge or consent. In the other, we can step into private environments “rooms” and snoop on people without their knowledge or consent. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what will be possible in terms of the misuse of the technology. CHITRA RAGAVAN, CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER AT BLOCKCHAIN DATA ANALYTICS COMPANY ELEMENTUS I picture [the metaverse] almost like The Truman Show. Only, instead of walking into a television set, you walk into the internet and can explore any number of different realities. It’s the tech moguls’ dream of re-coding the DNA of society. But will we feel more connected? Or lonelier than we are today? NOT FULLY VIRTUAL JOHN HANKE, CEO OF POKÉMON GO CREATOR NIANTIC We imagine the metaverse as reality made better, a world infused with magic, stories, and functionality at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. Through it, we think there is the potential to make people and society better by nudging us to get out, exercise, and rediscover the physical world around us. CAROLINA ARGUELLES NAVAS, GLOBAL PRODUCT MARKETING, AUGMENTED REALITY, SNAP Rather than building the “metaverse,” a separate and fully virtual reality that is disconnected from the physical world, we are focused on augmenting reality, not replacing it. We believe AR–or computing overlaid on the world around us–has a smoother path to mass adoption, but will also be better for the world than a fully virtual world. From reimagining entertainment to redefining the way we shop, AR is already changing the way we live our daily lives, and there are countless creative and useful experiences yet to be invented. URHO KONTTORI, COFOUNDER AND CTO OF AR/VR HEADSET MAKER VARJO We believe that the metaverse will fundamentally change the way we use technology to interact with each other. The best version of it will be based in reality, meaning users will be able to digitize their actual physical surroundings and interact with each other as lifelike human images as opposed to cartoonish avatars in pre-built virtual worlds. Empowering people with the tools they need to seamlessly bridge the real world with the unlimited flexibility of the virtual world will ultimately pave the way for all of us to teleport to anyone’s environment around the world. In the reality-based metaverse, we will be able to more effectively design 93
products of the future, meet and collaborate with our colleagues far away, and experience any remote place in real-time. CATHERINE ALLEN, CEO OF IMMERSIVE TECH RESEARCH CONSULTANCY LIMINA IMMERSIVE I think many people have absorbed the sci-fi concept of “the metaverse” being this idea of humans spending much of their waking hours living in a parallel virtual reality, having jobs there, property, businesses, education–even romantic relationships. The public, by and large, when asked, want immersive technology to improve their day-to-day quality of life on this physical earth. Personally, the more time I spend in VR, the more in awe I am at how well optimized our bodies and minds are to this physical earth. If we ditch these scifi assumptions and come to the idea of “the metaverse” with fresh eyes, then a world of exciting possibilities awaits. I prefer to think of the metaverse as simply bringing our bodies into the internet. BRANDS IN THE METAVERSE NICK PRINGLE, SVP EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR AT THE DIGITAL ADVERTISING AGENCY R/GA LONDON I don’t buy into the dystopian Ready Player One vision of the metaverse, one where we all switch to living in one seamless permanent virtual reality. In general humanity is too strong for that, and real life is too rich. I do think we’ll start to spend serious time in virtual spaces over the coming years—social media scrolling will be replaced by strolling virtual worlds, but we’ll still nip to the pub for pie, a pint, and a catch-up with mates. Some things can’t be replaced. In terms of AR, I think the big opportunity is in merging virtual and physical product experiences. Take sneakers, when I buy a physical sneaker it should unlock the virtual version and vice versa. The Roblox/Fortnite generation will look for brands that blend the real and unreal, and let them show that off to friends–repping your virtual style in the real world is a solid use case for AR. EMMA RIDDERSTAD, CEO & COFOUNDER OF AR/VR BRAND EXPERIENCE DEVELOPER WARPIN Building the metaverse at-large will be a collaborative effort between brands and consumers, and the winning brands will be those which manage to engage, and include, their audiences in the creative process. For example, if a shopper can co-create a garment, as we did with H&M and Star Wars in AR, they will be so much more engaged with the product, and subsequently the brand. A PLACE FOR BUSINESS VISHAL SHAH, VP OF METAVERSE, FACEBOOK The metaverse is a set of virtual three dimensional spaces where you can share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together. It will be inherently social; you’ll be able to hang out with friends, collaborate with colleagues, learn, shop and create 94
ARTICLE – among other things. The metaverse isn’t just VR! Those spaces will connect to AR glasses and to 2D spaces like Instagram. And most importantly, there will be a real sense of continuity where the things you buy are always available to you. Today, much of what you buy on the Internet is inside a single app, website, or game. You might buy a custom skin for your gaming avatar, but you can’t take it with you when you move to a new space. In the future, you’ll be able to buy goods and services and have them available to you in the metaverse more broadly–and for creators, this can open up new ways to build a meaningful business. SAYON DEB, MANAGER, MARKET RESEARCH, CONSUMER TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION The metaverse will be an infinite realm that blankets both the physical and virtual worlds. At its core will be a self-contained economy that allows individuals and businesses to create, own or invest in a range of activities and experiences. Like the internet, it won’t be just one thing–but several layers of different technologies, products and languages. DR. ROLF ILLENBERGER, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT ENTERPRISE VR DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM VRDIRECT We’re already starting to see how the metaverse is going to change the way employers approach Human Resources–everything from recruiting, to hiring, to training new staffers. There is a lot of pomp and circumstance out there around “Sims-like” virtual offices, but the practical nature of VR through things like career fairs, conferences, virtual showrooms, even employee onboarding and engagement programs will win out in the immediate short-term. Anything that an employer can streamline, both in cost and time savings, will come first, long before the glitz and glamour of what we’re seeing at major tech events. Beyond that, there’s an environmental aspect of minimizing global travel that will be considered and embraced as part of corporate sustainability programs, as will work-life balance for those employees who would typically do the traveling. NANDI NOBELL, SENIOR ASSOCIATE AT GLOBAL ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN FIRM CALLISONRTKL The vision of bridging physical and digital realities is about inhabiting an interface, where the metaverse is the spatial version of the Internet . . . Ideally, the metaverse is highly customizable and as separate or integrated into our physical realities as necessary—and desired. Therefore, the metaverse experience can be altered from the individual’s point of view and shaped or curated by any number of agents—whether human or A.I. In that sense, the metaverse does not have an objective look beyond its backend. In essence, the metaverse, together with our physical locations, forms a spatial continuum. The very materials of the metaverse are maths and imagination, so we should expect buildings or garments made here to function in new, more ambitious, and inspired ways than their counterparts in the physical world. After all, there is more than one way to skin a city when the only limitation is the computational cost per second.
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ERIN MCDANNALD, CEO OF REAL ESTATE MANAGEMENT AND IOT FIRM ENVIRONMENTS Within our office at Environments, we aim to converge the current workplace with our new digital workspace, and we also wanted the personification of the digital world for people to understand how to work in this digital setting. Our vision of what the metaverse looks like is a digital twin that mirrors what is happening in the physical universe on a real-time basis allowing remote employees and on-site employees to interact in a single branded collaborative environment and allows you to bring your 2D digital world to a 3D world. Those interactions can then be applied to metrics and using machine learning can optimize your business in literally hundreds of different ways. NICK CHERUKURI, CEO AND FOUNDER OF MIXED REALITY GLASSES MAKER THIRDEYE Consumers and entrepreneurs will all be able to interact amid the metaverse. Gamers, for example, can have massive multiplayer games in cities where hundreds of people could be on different teams wearing smart glasses and have virtual games behind skyscrapers. Restaurant chains can advertise their menus with virtual games that can only be played in their physical locations. Another example is coworkers sitting around a table as digital holograms for a conference as opposed to a video call, making virtual meetings seem more natural as it is in 3D. The AR applications of the metaverse are limitless and it really can become the next great version of the internet. RISHI MANDAL, CEO OF CONCIERGE-STYLE FITNESS APP FUTURE Human connection and accountability is at the heart of what has been most successful for improving consumer health and fitness. The broad history of the internet has been to enable this between people who aren’t standing next to one another. Now, we’re entering a new chapter with modalities that can amplify or deepen connection, and these are going to be critical for allowing people everywhere to access expertise, coaching, and the partnership required to live a healthier life. SAM TABAR, CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, BITCOIN MINING COMPANY BIT DIGITAL It seems fair to predict that the actual aesthetic of any given metaverse will be determined by user demand. If users want to exist in a gamified world populated by outrageous avatars and fantastic landscapes then the metaverse will respond to that demand. Like all things in this world the metaverse will be market driven, and used for everything that we currently do in life. Honesty, I can’t think of a single thing that won’t happen in the metaverse. Shopping for everything from a vacuum cleaner to art is already happening. But people are also building homes, traveling, hanging out, and even having sex in virtual worlds. So it stands to reason this will continue as creators continue to build this new iteration of online life.
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ARTICLE What is the ‘metaverse’? Facebook says it’s the future of the Internet. The 2018 sci-fi film “Ready Player One” offers a glimpse of what many technology companies prophesy is the Internet’s next big thing. Inspired by a 2011 Ernest Cline novel, the film’s orphaned teenage hero flees his bleak realworld existence by immersing in a dazzling, virtual reality fantasy. The boy straps on his headset, reminiscent of a pair of VR goggles, and escapes into a trippy virtual universe, dubbed “Oasis.” A number of tech CEOs say that one day soon, we will all be hanging out in an interactive virtual reality world: Instead of Oasis, they call it the metaverse. As crisis has eclipsed Facebook, it has leaned in to its virtual reality offerings, announcing on Monday a heavy investment in the company’s Reality Labs division. It’s expected to change its name imminently to reflect this identity, which it has been selling since CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook should be known as “a metaverse company” on a July earnings call. The goal, he said at the time, is to populate this virtual world by enticing new users with cheap headsets. Eventually, Zuckerberg hinted, this robust user base would prove an adverting boon: “hundreds of millions of people” in the metaverse “compounds the size of the digital economy inside it.” The metaverse is different from today’s virtual reality, where clunky headsets offer siloed experiences and few chances to cross-play with people who own other gadgets. Instead, the metaverse would be a massive communal cyberspace, linking augmented reality and virtual reality together, enabling avatars to hop seamlessly from one activity to the next. It’s a huge undertaking that would require standardization and cooperation among tech giants, who are not prone to collaborating with competitors — though it hasn’t stopped many from saying the metaverse is just around the corner. The metaverse doesn’t exist today, and there’s no clear date for its arrival. Augmented reality and virtual reality have yet to woo the masses and remain a niche interest, despite Zuckerberg’s pledge in 2017 to bring a billion people onto Oculus headsets. But Facebook isn’t the only company betting heavily on the metaverse. In May, Microsoft said it is “uniquely positioned” with a stack of artificial intelligence and mixed reality tools to help companies start developing “metaverse apps today.” A number of gaming companies, including Fortnite’s owner Epic Games, have released simulation software and VR services for a metaverse. Here’s what you should know. WHAT TO KNOW What is the metaverse? How does the metaverse work? Who are its power players? Will the metaverse actually happen? So why are companies doing this? What is the metaverse? The term was coined by writer Neal Stephenson in the 1992 dystopian novel “Snow Crash.” In 97
it, the metaverse refers to an immersive digital environment where people interact as avatars. The prefix “meta” means beyond and “verse” refers to the universe. Tech companies use the word to describe what comes after the Internet, which may or may not be reliant on VR glasses. Think of it as an embodied Internet that you’re inside of rather than looking at. This digital realm wouldn’t be limited to devices: Avatars could walk around in cyberspace similar to how people maneuver the physical world, allowing users to interact with people on the other side of the planet as if they’re in the same room. But for a robust virtual universe, everyone needs to want and afford VR headsets. The technology would need to be stylish and minimal enough to interest more people and sophisticated enough to work seamlessly. That hasn’t happened yet. Nimble wireless headsets, like Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2, take a hit on image quality, while bulky VR goggles, like the HTC Vive Pro 2, enable more computing power with their wires. Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 is among the most affordable at $299, while the HTC Vive Pro 2 headset starts at $799 plus the cost of controllers. How does the metaverse work? In theory, you’d log on to the metaverse similarly to logging on to the Internet. Only you’d use a head-mounted display, not a screen, to view content and a form of motion tracking, like Facebook’s wristband, to grab objects. To be a full universe, no single company could own the metaverse, similarly to how no one owns the Internet. But companies may try to monopolize their respective corners of the metaverse, just as a handful of large tech companies dominate online content today. Firms could do this similarly to how they make money off apps via subscription services, shopping carts and advertising. “There will be power players for sure,” said Denise White, founder of the immersive tech company Blank XR. “Once you’re able to put on your new AR glasses and you suddenly see these holograms walking around in the world, then you’ll know, you’re now inside of the metaverse.” With so many devices offered by different companies, it’s unclear how a single avatar could move between them. One theory is that the metaverse would pick up cues from web browsers. Just like you can toggle between websites on your smartphone, your avatar might jump between platforms built to be cross-compatible and inclusive, said Daniel Liebeskind, CEO of Topia, a video chat platform. “The metaverse should be a collection of technologies, backends and experiential frontends that all play nicely together,” Liebeskind said. Who are its power players? Several large tech companies are chasing down the metaverse. Facebook bought Oculus in 2014 with this metaverse vision in mind. Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time that the social networking site is “getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow.” More recently, Facebook launched a new product group to build the new 3-D social space, calling for a “connective tissue” to bridge varying services together. In May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company working to build an “enterprise metaverse.” A month earlier, Epic Games said it raised $1 billion to spend on its metaverse 98
ARTICLE plans. The computing giant Nvidia and gaming platform Roblox are also working in this realm. Last year, Spatial released a free AR app allowing avatars to appear within a user’s real-world environment. Meanwhile, Snapchat has been moving in this direction for years, introducing custom avatars and filters that overlay the world with digital content. Apple also has longtime AR ambitions. Magic Leap was one of the earliest companies to draw attention to the space when it released an augmented reality app in 2011. Today, it mostly sells to businesses, according to its website. But there’s still room for start-ups, since a digital world would require loads of content, tools and places for people to see and engage with. Will the metaverse actually happen? It’s not yet clear. While technological advances have made VR headsets lighter weight and more affordable in recent years, the devices are primarily used by a niche group — gamers — and have been since the beginning. And most gamers still don’t have a VR system. Just 29 percent of the 169 million gamers in the United States say they own one, according to figures from the Entertainment Software Association. “At the moment, VR is stuck as a subset of games consoles, and it’s not self-evident that it will break out of that,” said Benedict Evans, a tech analyst and former partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. “Gaming is a big business, and it’s hundreds of millions of people, but is not billions of people. So it’s not a universal experience.” So why are companies doing this? It depends on whom you ask. VR companies say it’s only a matter of time before consumers, already obsessed with social media, will want somewhere new to interact and attract digital likes. A metaverse could allow people tired of photo filters and video editing tools to digitally embody whole new personas and show their creativity or financial status through avatars. It might also drive young people to spend even more time online. ings they cannot do in the Apple Store or Google Play Store,” said Nikita Anufriev, chief product officer of Dreamcam, a webcam VR company. It would also give Facebook and other companies a new revenue stream. “If you can create a universal pair or AR glasses, you own the platform under which everyone has to buy assets,” said Mike Cadoux, general manager at QReal, a start-up creating 3-D models for VR. Other firms are likely investing in the metaverse vision because they don’t want to risk getting left behind, while some are experimenting to see what the possibilities are. “It’s the little kid in all of us that wants to live in a sci-fi novel. We want life to be fun like a game,” said Jon Morris, a founder of Nowhere, a virtual events platform. “And there aren’t the tools to do it well on the Internet yet.”
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State of the Metaverse 2021 Apple customers spent $1.8 billion on digital items and services between Christmas and New Year’s leading into 2021. The digital economy is taking over quickly. Blockchains and NFTs will soon be at the center of the transformation. Due to a looming convergence of technologies, this trend is going to accelerate over the next decade. Welcome to the metaverse. In this article, we’ll discuss what the metaverse is, why it’s important, some of the current trends, and what we might expect for metaverse development in 2021. “Metaverse” means many things, but the main ingredients are ubiquitous networking, cryptocurrencies and cryptonetworks like Bitcoin and Ethereum, eXtended Reality (XR) including VR and AR, and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). What is the Metaverse? The metaverse, in a nutshell, is the digital world, where anything we can imagine can exist. Eventually, we’ll be connected to the metaverse all the time, extending our senses of sight, sound, and touch, blending digital items into the physical world, or popping into fully immersive 3D environments whenever we want. That family of technologies is known collectively as eXtended Reality (XR). I believe that the metaverse will one day be a HUGE economy, representing up to 10x the total value of the entire current global economy. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about yet, I spoke about it with Andrew Steinwold on the Zima Red Podcast: Today, we’re seeing shadowy glimpses of what the metaverse may soon become. To understand what will be, we should first take a look at where it came from. In 1985, Richard Garriott coined the term “avatar” to describe a player’s character in a video game. “Ultima IV was the first game I wanted the player to respond to what I called ‘moral dilemmas and ethical challenges’ as they personally would [and not like an alter ego]. While doing my research on virtues and ethicsato look for ethical parables or moral philosophy I came across the concept of the word ‘avatar’ in a lot of Hindu texts. In that case, the avatar was the physical manifestation of a god when it came down to earth. That’s perfect, because really I’m trying to test your spirit within my fictional realm.” — Richard Garriott In his 1992 book, “Snowcrash”, Neal Stephenson imagined an internet-like virtual reality world he called “the metaverse” where users would interact with digital forms of themselves called “avatars” From Snowcrash, the term “avatar” spread across popular fiction franchises, including Earnest Cline’s “Ready Player One”, which was turned into a popular movie. In “Ready Player One”, a centralized metaverse called the Oasis hosted avatars which could be customized in a variety of ways. Players could purchase items and outfits to use in-game. Those items had real value, and losing them was a big deal. A lot of video game players can relate. We work hard for those in-game rewards, only to discover that at any time, those items can be taken away from us, or their value could be destroyed by some centralized power who controls all of the items, and each item’s capabilities. 100
ARTICLE In the years before Bitcoin exploded as the world’s first viable cryptocurrency, Vitalik Buterin was an avid World of Warcraft player. “Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring.” ~ Vitalik Buterin That led Vitalik to propose the idea for Ethereum — a decentralized cryptonetwork like the one that backs the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, but a cryptonetwork that could execute arbitrary, Turing-complete programs, called smart contracts. Those smart contracts can do many things. One of those things is to represent a unique digital item, called a Non-Fungible Token (NFT). Why the Metaverse Needs Cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and Open Standards Digital items are already more than a $10 billion market, and Fortnite alone has sold more than $1 billion. But currently, Fortnite’s digital items only work in Fortnite, and if Epic Games ever decided to shut Fortnite down, those items would be rendered worthless overnight. A multi-billion dollar market would vanish into the ether. On August 13th, Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite sued Apple over the 30% fee for in-game purchases. Facebook announced in December 2020 that it will support Epic Games in the lawsuit because they also had issues trying to release products with in-app purchases on the Apple app store. A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is a digital item that can be created (minted), sold or purchased on an open market, and owned and controlled by any individual user, without the permission or support of any centralized company. In order for digital items to have real, lasting value, they must exist independent of an entity who might decide at any moment to remove or disable the item. It is that property of NFTs that make them able to command hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example, a collaboration between Trevor Jones and DC Comic artist José Delbo sold for 302.5 ETH, which was $111k at the time. Now that ETH is worth more than $220k. The difference between the items in Fortnite and an NFT is simple: True ownership. Digital property rights. The buyer of that NFT never has to worry that some company in the cloud is going to stop their service or freeze their account. The metaverse must be an open ecosystem, not an ecosystem dominated by the whims of any single company. The metaverse consists of many parts, but here are the basic foundations: The internet — a decentralized network of computers which is not owned by any single entity or government, and does not require the central permission of any such entity to use. Open standards for media, including text, images, audio, video, 3D items, 3D scenes and geometry, vectors, sequences, and procedures to generate and combine any of these things. Pixar’s USD and NVIDIA’s MDL are great steps towards interoperability for 3D applications. Open programming language standards for any of the above. Such standards include HTML, JavaScript, WebAssembly, WebXR, WebGPU Shader Language, etc. eXtended Reality (XR) hardware such as smart glasses, haptics, and omni treadmills. Decentralized ledgers and smart contract platforms (e.g., Blockchains) for transparent, 101
permissionless, and censorship-resistant transactions. Examples include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Flow, and Theta, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and many others. These form important foundations for the ownership economy that will support the metaverse and make it a viable public good. You can’t have a truly open economy if there is a central actor controlling the assets, user capabilities, and bank accounts. Only open, interoperable specifications and decentralized, permissionless, Turing-complete smart contract platforms will support the ownership economy needed for the metaverse to thrive. In Ready Player One, an evil corporation called IOI was attempting to solve a treasure hunt to gain total control of the Oasis. IOI was motivated to extract maximum profits at any cost, including the legal imprisonment and enslavement of large swaths of humanity to work off debts. That’s a bit extreme, but if any single company has too much control of the metaverse, they might decide to follow Apple’s lead and extort huge cuts from all transactions in the metaverse, strangling economic efficiency, and stifling innovation and the discovery of new and beneficial business models. A decentralized economy is more fair, more efficient, and more long-term sustainable than trusting any single company with the keys to the metaverse. In the cryptoverse, everybody gets their own keys to their own kingdoms. The Multiverse Currently, there isn’t one universally interoperable metaverse like the Oasis from Ready Player One. Instead, we have a bunch of different platforms competing for users. The first MMO and open world games, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life began to lay the foundations of the modern 3D multiverse around 2003–2004, but as Vitalik discovered, their economies rely 100% on a single centralized company you must trust to respect the needs of the users, and you can’t take your items and money from one game world to another. Decentraland is a 3D space where you can build virtual worlds, play games, explore museums packed with NFT art, attend live concerts, etc. It works in a standard web browser if you have the MetaMask extension installed to give you access to the cryptocurrency and NFT features. You can buy and sell properties, create and sell virtual art for the art galleries, or build worlds. Several companies have invested in land in Decentraland, and some of them may be willing to pay skilled builders to develop it. Decentraland has even got into the conference space, and has proven that there are interesting opportunities to create unique and creative booth experiences for vendors. 3D scene designers may one day be able to earn a good living designing vendor experiences for metaverse-hosted conferences. There are a variety of playable mini games in Decentraland, and some of them reward you with NFTs that you may be able to sell on OpenSea. Similar platforms like Somnium Space and The Sandbox have also emerged. As far as I’m aware though, you can’t take your Decentraland wearables into The Sandbox. The Multiverse Needs an Omniverse 102
ARTICLE The internet is a bit like that today. Lots of different apps and spaces, and relatively little information shared between them, but crypto and decentralized computing are beginning to break down some of those walls. For example, you can take what you own with you from one app to another. You can make a cryptocurrency swap on Uniswap, for example, and then see the balances reflected in Zerion. Likewise, you can sell your Decentraland wearables on OpenSea. The same is not true of most of the 3D world assets, or the environments themselves. For example, I can’t explore the Decentraland world in The Sandbox, or open a game made in Unity with an Unreal Engine app. If we want our worlds to be truly open and explorable across different platforms, devices, and engines, we need the data to be open and accessible, and we need just-in-time services and data subscriptions to deliver assets when and where we need them. NVIDIA’s Omniverse combines open file formats like Pixar’s Universal Scene Description with network services that you can connect with the software tools you use to create media for VR. The result is that world creators can collaborate across a variety of apps, in realtime, all editing and viewing the same assets. It’s basically like collaborating in Google Docs for 3D worlds. There are a variety of playable mini games in Decentraland, and some of them reward you with NFTs that you may be able to sell on OpenSea. Similar platforms like Somnium Space and The Sandbox have also emerged. As far as I’m aware though, you can’t take your Decentraland wearables into The Sandbox. The Multiverse Needs an Omniverse The internet is a bit like that today. Lots of different apps and spaces, and relatively little information shared between them, but crypto and decentralized computing are beginning to break down some of those walls. For example, you can take what you own with you from one app to another. You can make a cryptocurrency swap on Uniswap, for example, and then see the balances reflected in Zerion. Likewise, you can sell your Decentraland wearables on OpenSea. The same is not true of most of the 3D world assets, or the environments themselves. For example, I can’t explore the Decentraland world in The Sandbox, or open a game made in Unity with an Unreal Engine app. If we want our worlds to be truly open and explorable across different platforms, devices, and engines, we need the data to be open and accessible, and we need just-in-time services and data subscriptions to deliver assets when and where we need them. NVIDIA’s Omniverse combines open file formats like Pixar’s Universal Scene Description with network services that you can connect with the software tools you use to create media for VR. The result is that world creators can collaborate across a variety of apps, in realtime, all editing and viewing the same assets. It’s basically like collaborating in Google Docs for 3D worlds. Omniverse uses Pixar’s USD as the native file format, but it takes it one step further, by offering the assets as live cloud-enabled services that many apps can connect to simultaneously. Pixar’s USD technology is open source, which means that any developer can download the tools and adopt these technologies and integrate them in their apps and games. I would urge 103
all of the people working on metaverse-related projects to converge around sharable, open technologies and assets. But data sharing isn’t the end of it. The substrate of the metaverse is shared data, shared computation, and shared bandwidth, and when they all come together, it can extend the range of what we can accomplish together as a species. Now what we need is a decentralized omniverse that acts as a public good that anybody can use, contribute to, host nodes for, and build on. The Cryptocurrency Connection Distributed computing software like Folding@Home has existed since the year 2000. Peer to peer file sharing has existed since the 1990s. We could have built a common operating system for file sharing and decentralized computation decades ago. But there was a key component missing: How do we reward users to contribute to the public services? Lots of people will donate their CPU time to help fight cancer and COVID-19, but one of the main problems with P2P file sharing services is freeloading. Lots of people will connect, consume the shared resources, and then split before they’ve contributed enough to make up the cost of what they took. We needed incentives. Cryptocurrencies are programmable money, and with them, we can create self-sustaining protocols: File sharing services where people are paid to share their space and bandwidth, or compute-sharing services where people are paid to share their pricey gaming GPU when they’re not playing. Similarly, we can pool our money together to provide liquidity so that users can swap from one digital currency to another efficiently. Liquidity providers get paid for adding liquidity to the market. Since I started writing this article, I’ve earned 3.7617 TFUEL (about $0.13) on the Theta network in exchange for sharing bandwidth and compute. The Theta Edge Compute beta automatically donates resources to Folding@Home, too. I get to do my good deed and get paid. Cryptocurrencies allow us to rally around a shared metaverse and pay for the services required to support it without a single company owning all the resources. Instead of everybody paying AWS, anybody can run service nodes in their homes and recover some of the costs of the hardware required to interact with the metaverse. AI and the Metaverse One of the most important and overlooked aspects of the metaverse will be AI. There are so many use-cases. Here are a few examples: AI can be used to create, audit, and secure smart contracts, making them safer and easier to create and use. We have an immediate need for this, and the technology we need to do it exists. Intelligent AI beings can wander the metaverse and interact with us and each other. Today, AI can generate photorealistic images and 3D models of human faces, generate text for conversation, convert that text to human-sounding speech, and animate 3D characters to make it look like they are speaking. AI can assist us in the creation of metaverse assets, artwork, and content. 104
ARTICLE AI can improve the software and processes we use to build all of these things. In a few more years, AI will improve AI and lead to an explosion of intelligence and technology. Eventually, AI may be able to generate complete virtual worlds in realtime as we explore. The lines may continue to blur between Graphic rendering technology and AI technology. AI could one day take some input, like “a lush jungle environment with a stream flowing from a waterfall” and turn it into a fully immersive 3D environment we can explore and interact with. AI can even generate the description, today, due to enhanced creative and language skills. In case you’re skeptical about the conversational capabilities of AI, watch this video of me chatting with OpenAI’s GPT-3. GPT-3’s avatar is a virtual actor, animated by AI via Synthesia: Hardware The current state of the art in XR hardware is still Microsoft Hololens 2. Thankfully, XR software has improved and become more ubiquitous. For example, if you have an Android device, some Google searches will turn up 3D items you can view in your living room by looking through the device camera. Next Steps If you want to learn how to contribute to the metaverse, we offer a crypto mentorship track at DevAnywhere.io. Mention when you apply that you want to learn how to build the metaverse. We’ll pair you with an experienced mentor and give you the opportunity to contribute to the standards and protocols that support the metaverse. Eric Elliott is a tech product and platform advisor, author of “Composing Software”, cofounder of EricElliottJS.com and DevAnywhere.io, and dev team mentor. He has contributed to software experiences for Adobe Systems, Zumba Fitness, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, BBC, and top recording artists including Usher, Frank Ocean, Metallica, and many more. He enjoys a remote lifestyle with the most beautiful woman in the world.
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Communication practices, Avatar,Virtual Worlds 1.In Search of Disembodiment: the Case of Second Life ; À la recherche de la désincarnation : le cas de Second Life Martin Robert in Emulations - Revue de sciences sociales; Varia Section ; Emulations - Revue de sciences sociales; Rubrique Varia ; 1784-5734 ; 2030-5656 (2013-12-01) 2.My Second Life as a Cyber Border Crosser Carleen D. Sanchez in Journal For Virtual Worlds Research; Vol 2, No 5 (2009): The Metaverse As sembled ; 1941-8477 (2010-02-09) 3.De rl (real life) a sl (second life) los metaversos Mario Guevara Mendoza in Temas Socio-Jurídicos Vol. 28 Núm. 58 (2010) (2010-06-09) 4.Actors and Their Use of Avatars as Personal Mediators: An empirical study of avatar-based sense-makings and communication practices in the virtual worlds of EverQuest and Second Life Sisse Siggaard Jensen in MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research; Vol. 25 No. 47 (2009): Online worlds as media and communication format; 15 p. ; MedieKultur; Årg. 25 Nr. 47 (2009): Online worlds as media and communication format; 15 p. ; 1901-9726 ; 0900-9671 (2009-12-10) 5.Kim MacKenzie hits back on negative media coverage of Second Life 162
CREDIT Kim MacKenzie (2008-09-09 00:00:00) 6.The Semiotics of Religious Space in Second Life Leone M. (2011)
Ambient intelligence, Neal Stephenson, Metaverse 1.The gender differences in metaverse : a study of university art & design students KW Lau (2014) 2.A Look at the Self from the Past to the Future: Genuineness, Time and Freedom ; A Look at the Self from the Past to the Future: Authenticity, Time, and Freedom Volkan CIFTECI in Volume: 1, Issue: 2 195-210 ; 2651-2963 ; MetaZihin: Yapay Zeka ve Zihin Felsefesi Dergisi (2018-12-30T00:00:00Z) 3.Technology and Metaphors: From Cyberspace to Ambient Intelligence Norberto Nuno GOMES DE ANDRADE (2010) 4.Space and Nonspace: The Future of Mobility in Global Capitalism
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Chad Andrews in Strategies of Critique; Vol 1, No 2 (2010) ; 1916-7210 (2010-12-06)
Film 1. Ready Player One 2. Minority Report 3. Avatar 4. Iron Man 5. Wreck it Ralph 6. #Horror 7. V/H/S: Viral 8. Smart House 9. Her 10. Tron 11. The Matrix 12. Strange Days 13. Lucy 14. Free Guy Novel 1. Snow Crash 2. Otherland 3. Fire Upon the Deep 164
CREDIT 4. Rainbows End 5. Daemon 6. Neuromancer 7. Lexicon 8. Ready Player One 9. Bobiverse 10.
Altered Carbon
11. The Unincorporated Man 12. Eastern Standard Tribe 13. Accelerando 14.The Culture series
Television Black Mirror The Entire History of You Nosedive Playtest Westworld Upload The Feed Altered Carbon Mr. Robot 165
Ghost in the shell Sword Art Online Love Death + Robots Star Trek Person of Interest Mythic Quest
BOOK 1.Heritage preservation in the post-digital era: How much information is enough? 2.Between the physical and the virtual: The present tense of virtual space. 3.First Contact – Take 2: Using XR technology as a bridge between Maori, Pakeha and people from other cultures in Aotearoa, New Zealand 4.Translating performative mediated art into virtual reality: A case study.. 5.Unmasking the Mah Meri mask: A digitization journey for AR and VR. 6.The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything 7.Charlie Fink's Metaverse - an AR Enabled Guide to VR and AR 8.Learning in Metaverses: Co-exisitng in Real Virtuality Luciana Backes 9.The Augmented Workforce 10.Marching Toward the Metaverse: The Strategic Communication Through the New Media
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WE WILL BE BOTH HERE AND THERE
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