What difficulties and challenges will the metaverse encounter in the process of landing? How to solve it?

Overcome these difficulties

in order to reach the other side of the metaverse

◎ Zuo Pengfei

The "Cosmology" of the Metacosm (2)

With the blessing of a large number of algorithms, the new visual scenes produced by the metaverse will make more people immersed in the virtual world and unable to extricate themselves. How to maintain the positive interaction between the real world and the metaverse, give play to the positive role of the metaverse, suppress the negative effect, and properly solve the problem of digital addiction in the future is a major challenge that the metaverse will face in the future.

Since the beginning of this year, metaverse-related topics have continued to maintain high popularity. Digital technology giants at home and abroad have accelerated the layout of the metacosm in the core links of hardware, software, systems, applications and other industries; local governments have further improved their expectations for the future of the metacosmic industry, and Shanghai, Zhejiang, Wuhan, Hefei and other provinces and cities have incorporated the metacosm into the future industrial development system. So, what difficulties will the metaverse, which currently has a good development trend, encounter in the process of landing? What challenges will we face in the future, and how can we solve these difficulties and challenges?

The "Mengxin" metaverse needs to break through the five major bottlenecks

As an emerging industry, the development of the metacosm can be divided into three stages: budding, growth and maturity. From the perspective of development status, the current metacosm is in its embryonic stage, the industrial base is relatively weak, and there is still a big gap from mature applications. In the embryonic stage, in addition to technical constraints, there are still many realistic bottlenecks that need to be broken through in the scene landing of the metaverse.

First, the design of the basic framework of the metaverse. The normal operation of the economic and social system needs a series of rules and systems to support. Metaversity is a digital scene simulation of the real economy and society, which will be displayed to users in a more vivid, specific and vivid way, which will involve the selection and establishment of a series of basic frameworks such as system design, legal norms, and cultural customs. For example, in reality, there are many kinds of urban styles, and the urban image in the metaverse adopts the urban style of which country or region, whether the selected style is appropriate, and whether the user can accept it, it is easy to cause controversy.

Second, data security and privacy protection issues. In recent years, with the increasingly severe global data security situation, increasing data security governance has become a common choice for all countries. Metaverse scenarios need to meet the higher demands of individuals for intelligent perception, so the collection of personal work and life-related data will increase exponentially, and this process will involve a large amount of personal privacy and information. In the context of the current tightening of data regulation, the collection and use of metaverse-related data will also face more restrictions.

Third, the problem of convenient application entrance. At present, the main application scenarios of the metaverse are mostly displayed, and the application scenarios of human-computer interaction and human-human interaction are relatively small, mainly because the application entrance of the metaverse is still immature and inconvenient. Based on the user's sense of experience needs and the visual function display requirements of the enterprise, the main application entrance of the future metacosm will be a virtual image or virtual person. In other words, in the future metaverse, we will not click on apps, but avatars. However, the development and design of avatar applications is still in its infancy, resulting in a lack of effective solutions to the basic entrance problem of metaverse applications.

Fourth, the effective application of the production end. Because the metaverse has significant dynamic visualization characteristics, and technologies such as digital twins and mixed reality have deep application prospects in the industrial chain, the industry's future application expectations for metaverses are more at the production end, especially in the manufacturing field. However, the current metaverse is mainly used in entertainment, games and other fields, and lacks the entry point and focus point of deep integration with the production field, and cannot yet form a demonstration and benchmarking application at the production end.

Fifth, the energy supply problem of the metacosm. At present, the pace of green transformation of the global economy is accelerating, and the shortage of energy supply is likely to increase now and in the coming period. As a large-scale connected virtual reality application scenario, the smooth operation of the metacosm is inseparable from the support of new infrastructure such as data centers, computing centers, network equipment, and communication base stations, and the operation of these infrastructures requires a larger energy supply. The contradiction between energy supply and demand is likely to become more prominent in the process of metacosmonic construction.

The mature metaverse may face three major challenges

Benefiting from favorable factors such as user scale, policy support, and innovation experience, the continental meta-universe industry is expected to accelerate its expansion and extension in many fields in the future, and reshape the traditional industrial system in a visual revolution. When the metaverse enters a period of stable maturity, its development will also face more new challenges, which can be summarized as follows:

The first is the problem of the metaverstem infrastructure being attacked. In the future, the metacosm will evolve into a complex system of ultra-large scale, extreme openness, and dynamic optimization, which will be supported by a huge digital infrastructure and traditional infrastructure. At the same time, because the metaverse will be more deeply integrated into people's daily work and life than the Internet, if the metaverse-related infrastructure is attacked, invaded, interfered with and destroyed, it will have a serious impact on normal economic and social development.

The second is the problem of high monopoly. The mature operation of the meta-universe system needs to realize the connection and interaction of ultra-large-scale users, the docking and unification of massive standards and specifications, and the operation of large-scale infrastructure, so the early construction process requires powerful enterprises to invest huge manpower and material resources, which also leads to the metacosm has an inherent monopoly gene. At the same time, the mature operation of the metacosm also requires relatively stable service providers. Therefore, how to avoid the formation of a high degree of monopoly will be a very important topic in the future development of the meta-universe industry.

The third is the problem of digital addiction. With the in-depth development of the metaverse, its "double-edged sword" feature will become more prominent. On the positive side, the metacosm will break the physical rules of the real world that people are accustomed to, redefine most of the production and lifestyle in the virtual world, have a significant impact on the three different levels of macro society, meso industry and micro individual, and improve the production efficiency of the whole society with new production methods and cooperative methods. However, on the negative side, with the blessing of a large number of algorithms, the new visual scenes produced by the metaverse will make more people immersed in the virtual world and unable to extricate themselves. How to maintain the positive interaction between the real world and the metaverse, give play to the positive role of the metaverse, suppress the negative effect, and properly solve the problem of digital addiction in the future is also a major challenge that the metaverse will face in the future.

The development metacosm should be planned in advance from four aspects

The metaverse carries the extension and expansion of the real world, and with the deepening of its understanding, enterprises and users will have clearer goals and expectations for the future application scenarios of the metaverse. In order to solve the practical bottleneck of the current metaverse development, better cope with the risks and challenges of the future metacosm, and promote the healthy and orderly development of the continental metacosmonic industry, we should start from the following four aspects:

First of all, grasp the law and actively guide. The meta-universe industry is currently in its infancy, but its development prospects are huge. On the one hand, the metacosmic industrial model is not yet mature, the industrial pattern has not yet been formed, and the industrial innovation space is huge; on the other hand, the metacosm has huge application prospects in social governance, public services and other fields. Therefore, it is necessary to respect the development law of emerging industries, actively guide relevant enterprises in the meta-universe field to focus on technological innovation, steadily improve technological maturity, encourage relevant enterprises to actively fulfill their corresponding social responsibilities while pursuing business goals, and promote enterprises to establish and improve the compliance management system.

Second, scientific supervision and promote self-discipline. Only by adhering to scientific supervision can we better promote the development of the metacosm. On the one hand, we should adhere to the equal emphasis on regulatory norms and promote development, study and solve the outstanding problems faced by the meta-universe industry in the process of development, and promote the acceleration of the formation of industry self-discipline in the meta-universe enterprises; on the other hand, the supervision of cutting-edge scientific and technological fields such as meta-universe requires a large number of new scientific and technological means such as blockchain, big data, and artificial intelligence, and the relevant regulatory departments should keep pace with the times to promote the upgrading of traditional regulatory means and methods, and continuously enhance the level of science and technology and intelligence of supervision.

Again, the standard comes first, and the ecology is powered. The construction and development of the metaverse requires ultra-large-scale connectivity, which requires a series of standards and protocols on data, interfaces, platforms, code, etc., to promote the realization of a large connection between different ecosystems in the metaverse. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage enterprises and scientific research units to accelerate the development of standards, strengthen the construction of ecological systems by building standards and norms first, and promote the meta-universe industry to enter the "fast lane" of development.

Finally, improve norms and forward-looking legislation. With the continuous expansion of the application scenarios and scope of the metaverse, various types of problems may arise in the future, and only under the escort of the law can the meta-universe industry be cultivated and grown and run smoothly. Therefore, under the premise of ensuring the innovation vitality of the metaversic field, it is necessary to timely follow up and improve the laws and regulations on data, algorithms, platforms, etc., strengthen forward-looking scientific legislation, and think in advance about how to prevent and solve legal problems that may arise from the development of the metacosm.

(The author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Quantitative and Technological Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Source: Science and Technology Daily