Road to the Future: The Next Generation Internet and Metaverse

Source: Jiazi Lightyear

原文标题：《 通往未来之路：下一代互联网与 Metaverse | 甲子光年 》

Author: Chen Junhong

Edit & have spent Miss | armor & have spent

Chen Junhong is a former game producer and now an entrepreneur in the field of AI and virtual content. He has won global honors for his games and AI products. Chen Junhong has been practicing and thinking about the technologies and products needed to integrate games, AI, virtual worlds and virtual content for years.

A name, a name called Metaverse, is buzzing around the world, attracting businesses and capital.

The term comes from an old science fiction novel called "Snow Crash," which built a new world called Metaverse. Published 29 years ago in "A Vision of What's Coming," a new world -- born out of, parallel to, and always online -- is slowly emerging in iterations.

But how do you understand Metaverse? How far away is it? What are the paths to Metaverse? Will the next generation of platform companies emerge in this process, and where will the next generation of WeChat and Facebook emerge?

Chen Junhong, the author of this article, shares his views and predictions, hoping to spark more discussion and even debate, and contribute to seeing the future and the way forward. Because no one has a clear path forward in Metaverse yet.

This paper presents seven insights into the future, presents a series of predictions from near to far, discusses the possible features of the next generation Internet, and discusses the opportunities and existential crises that humanity will face in the future world.

Watch a:Whoever masters flow, masters the Internet.WeChat /Facebook is the flow network of the day. The next generation of flow networks is emerging from products that offer higher sensory immersion and/or deeper spiritual immersion;

To observe the two:Human life will accelerate the migration to flow networks.The integration of flow networks with the world will bring all kinds of industrial opportunities and entrepreneurial opportunities. In existing flow networks, WeChat is superior to Facebook;

Watch three:With the development of content technology and automation industry technology, "imagination realization" is becoming a sexy new trillion-level business, symbolizing the great success of human science and technology to revive magic;

Observe the four:More and more, commercial competition is about content, about the territory of the mind. The value system of the product/business/organization will be fundamentally changed by content, and the new role of the CEO will be the "chief content officer", the leader of the competition in the mental domain;

Watch five:Distributed production will become the mainstream production mode, and will compete fiercely with centralized production. The adoption of blockchain and similar technologies will increase rapidly;

Observation 6:The new world's "undistinction between reality and reality" includes three levels: data without distinction between reality and reality, feeling without distinction between reality and reality, and the world without distinction between reality and reality.They will bring a lot of new infrastructure, new infrastructure opportunities and challenges;

Observe the seven:Neuron networks will bring humanity into full Metaverse.For thousands of years, humans have been rushing recklessly into the future, but the age of neuronal content is the first one that requires theoretical preparation and capability to have a chance to face it safely. And Metaverse is the definition of the future, a concept that will produce many great companies. They will be at the fork in the road between technology, content, people and engineering, and they still loom large, waiting to take off.

These seven observations lead to seven tracks for the future, which are great opportunities for entrepreneurs, new world routes for adventurers.

1. The introduction

Roblox "suddenly" went public, valuing the previously unknown company at nearly $40 billion on the day it went public, to the jaw-dropping of those who had never heard of it, and the "aha" of those who had.

All of a sudden, one concept was getting the most attention in venture capital circles:Metaverse.

Metaverse: Composed of Meta (transcendence.Meta) and Verse (Verse), which represents the universe, Metaverse generally represents the "next phase of the Internet" -- the online world supported by AR, VR, 3D, etc.

There are examples of new genres that quickly capture capital's attention, but not many that generate excitement, tension, and excitement in a short time like the Metaverse.

In part, this is because a powerful "social consensus" is in place.

Millions of people are eager to know the future -- how the next generation of the Internet will be defined, and where the next big thing will come from -- and Metaverse offers the perfect answer.

Facebook has more than 10,000 people working in VR/AR; Mr Ma says Quanzhen is Tencent's next "must-win" battle; Apple all in AR; Google has never slackened its efforts to read and understand the world...The concept of Metaverse perfectly integrated the efforts of giants to define the future, and became the answer to the future in the eyes of the masses with the emergence of a previously "niche, unknown" startup.

In this sense, the Metaverse concept "boots on" the future again, as the common vision of the future, in turn, powerfully promotes that future.

On the other, it is a harbinger of a "necessary bubble" that is rapidly forming.

History has proved countless times that:Capital can often do wonders when the future is bright but uncertain.

Every bubble that bursts can be disastrous for certain investors and entrepreneurs, but not for the industry.The injection of "bubble capital" brings more attention and discussion, which attracts more smart people into the game and accelerates the self-actualization of this future.

Still, the rapid buzz of the Metaverse concept reflects a mix of anxiety and excitement, fear and confidence. If a thousand people have a thousand futures, a hundred venture capitalists have 10,000 different MetaverseWe are betting on the future by calculating parallel universes, but there is only one future that belongs to the current timeline.

It was a strange, misty forest, and no one was a native guide. Everyone tried to look far and wide for the polestar on the dome and to find out where to go.

As a future observer, a long-term Metaverse researcher and engineer, I share some personal views and predictions here, hoping to generate more discussion and even debate, and contribute to seeing the future and the path ahead.

2. Flow Network MindNet Change: A certainty

Photo: Gerd Altmann@Pixabay

I'm going to use the term MindNet for the network that connects the user's mind.

Flow Network An abstract network connected to the flow of users. It runs on a social system/network platform, but is system/hardware-independent.

Its node is the human brain, not any other information carrier or computing device.

The intracranial world refers to the world composed of all the activities that take place inside the skull, as opposed to the extracranial world.

internodeedgeIt reflects the relationship between attentional connection and desire, not just social connection and traditional business connection; Flow content is flowing on the flow network, yesHuman attention, desire, motivation, and corresponding gratification, not code and data.

Flow networks have long existed, but on the soil of the Internet, they have grown explosively, emerged, flourished, spread, and iterated rapidly.

While there are many flow networks on top of various physical networks, there are only a few that occupy the most time and minds of the most people by virtue of the principle of efficiency. These are called flow backbones. Whoever controls the flow backbone, who controls the flow of users' minds, controls the Internet.

WeChat is the flow backbone that covers the current Internet in China. And Facebook, through years of relentless expansion, acquisition, and copying, has built a flow backbone -- except,WeChat is more like a conscious build, while Facebook is more like an instinctive growth and devouring.

Both WeChat and Facebook are constantly adding content categories, expanding their networks, and defending themselves against the expansion of emerging rivals. From any Angle, they are less likely to be overwhelmed by their opponents.

But at the same time, with the iteration, the newly born flow network becomes more and more mature, and the flow content potential energy carried by it becomes stronger and stronger, and the phenomenon of "holding content to make the world" becomes more and more frequent. In recent years, Douyin has risen, B Station has gone out of business, and Fortress Night has brought a huge impact. While today's flow backbone is not yet showing signs of decline, people are already talking about the next WeChat, the next Facebook.

Just as the word flow refers to a state of ecstasy and immersion,At the end of the day, a flow network is one that allows everyone to have a unique and fully immersive experience.

WeChat and Facebook are great products, but for the flow web, they're just a phase in its evolution. So to talk about their competitors is to feel the pulse of the next generation of flow networks, and to try to get a glimpse of what the next generation of flow networks might look like.

The key variable that triggers the flow network iteration is technology.New technologies make flow content more efficient, intuitive, and immersive, creating an unstoppable generation gap that forces flow networks to iterate.

No barrier can prevent users from leaping out and throwing themselves into sensory immersion and spiritual immersion experience that is more in line with human physiological characteristics and mental model, and constantly approaching that ultimate future. The previous generation of flow networks were continually bombarded and iterated by challengers until they were replaced. The iteration of flow networks often causes old flow networks to sink down to "hydro-coal" level infrastructure and grow new flow networks on top of it. People will eventually follow the flow network from generation to generation and converge into the future ocean of mind.

As a result,The iteration of new and old flow networks is the result of the potential energy of flow content generation difference.It manifesting itself as "who's taking who's users", but it's really more of a natural flow of users; It's a new platform beating the old one, but it's just the natural growth of the new platform and the natural death of the old one. In the final analysis,The battle between the old and new flow networks is a battle over the content of flow, not the network itself. So on the way to the future, those who gain content gain flow, and those who lose content lose the world.

What's next WeChat, Facebook? The answer may not be clear. But turning the question around, will there be new flow networks that offer more natural flow connections, higher levels of feeling and mental satisfaction than WeChat or Facebook? The answer is yes.

A more natural flow connection means a more cognitive fit. It meansMore natural content, more natural interaction, and lower mental cost.A higher level of feeling and mental satisfaction meansMore dimensions of feeling, higher intensity of feeling, deeper mental activation.

With the rapid iteration of content hardware and content technology, there will be more and more products that attempt to provide a more comprehensive experience than video, or even a deeper spiritual immersion than life. And there are some of themThe seeds of the next generation of flow backbone.

Recommended Focus:

· Social games

· Mental simulation products or platforms

· Multi-body system

· Complex Systems & NBSP;

·VR/AR products or platforms

3. Flowing into the world: it's instinct, it's tendency

Each flow network, in its own way, merges with the world.

For example, WeChat, "WeChat is a lifestyle" is not just a Slogan. WeChat is a conscious flow backbone, and Zhang Xiaolong knew his mission and challenges from the beginning. From the earliest connection to the penetration of content with Moments, to the penetration of commerce with WeChat payment, to the penetration of life with QR code and small programs as the tentacles of flow network, and to the penetration of physical world with WeChat hardware, WeChat has always been a model student of flow network.

Why does WeChat advocate "use and go"? Any "diversified use" by users of a flow network is the construction of a flow network.It's more important to help the flow network penetrate all areas of the world than it is to let you spend your time in some corner of the flow network.

By comparison, Facebook's pace is a bit messy. The early "Making the World More Open and Connected" seemed to describe the goal of a telecom carrier, while the later "Getting people to build communities, Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together,There is also no mention of more missions beyond connectivity.

If you look at Mr Zuckerberg's big acquisitions, whether they are "offensive" or "defensive", they are all about reinforcing the basic connections of the web. At least early on, Zuckerberg showed no sensitivity to the importance of flow networks integrating the world, instead indulging in his "connection wars." Eventually, though, he realized Facebook's responsibility and opportunity as a global flow backbone: Oculus trying to take over content, Facebook Pay trying to infiltrate commerce, Libra trying to take over payments, and VR/AR + Horizon's ambition to even take over the next generation of flow networks directly.

The impulse of the flow backbone is only temporarily suppressed, but it doesn't go away, and when given the chance, it jumps out at the world with open arms. Any company or product that helps the flow backbone integrate the world will be like a ship with a tailwind. This can be a useful perspective when thinking about the hard issues of IoT, SaaS, blockchain, and the like.

There are other flow networks, large and small, in different geographies and domains, doing the same thing. Fortress Night's Astronomical concert for Travis Scott last April, seen by more than 20 million people, is a case in point. Fortress Night is a gaming flow network with more than 350 million users, and with this concert it has become the largest show business in the world.Every flow network that can be deeply integrated with the world can be the definer of a new domain.

A flow network is a collection of thousands of minds. Analogically, she also has a certain mind of her own that wants to be happier, wants the world to be more friendly to her, and has a responsibility to be kind to her host by subtly reshaping the physical world.

Flow networks transform the world almost instinctively.

On the way to the future, no matter how much flow networks change, there's one trend that won't change:Everyday human life -- entertainment, work, socializing, survival -- will merge or migrate deeper and deeper into flow networks.First, most entertainment, then most social interaction and work, and finally even the physical ways and means of human existence will be transformed and deeply penetrated by flow networks.

Recommended Focus:

·IoT and IoT applications

· Gateway - like services integrating hardware and software

· Intelligent or technical entertainment

· Unmanned machine service

4. The realization of imagination, a sexy trillion-dollar new business

If the integration of the world by flow network is a top-down system-level transformation, then the individual's behavior of changing and creating the world is a bottom-up effort. Together, they pushed the world toward Metaverse.

I call the process of an individual transforming the world "imaginative realisation". It has two aspects:Imagination into reality, and imagination into cash.

Since the dawn of time, human beings have been obsessed with the never-ending goal of "being human" : to create the world with imagination.

Ancient hunters looked up at the stars to build stone henge, tens of thousands of workers in the pharaoh's gaze to build a pyramid, steel and cement in the roar of engineering machinery into skyscrapers, children in the sand piled up mountains and rivers castle...... It all starts with the same old thing: the human imagination.

The history of mankind is a history of the realization of imagination.

The desire to turn imagination into reality drives the emergence of better tools, more advanced technology, and the process of turning imagination into reality. In the process, markets organized themselves, creating an economic system that turned imagination into income, further driving the realisation of imagination, and thus modern society.

And Metaverse is the inevitable result of the comprehensive qualitative change of the realization ability of human imagination.

Based on the understanding and prediction of modern technology, no one should doubt that in the foreseeable future, any content, as long as can be conceived in the mind, advanced content technology will be able to quickly present it; Advanced intelligent industry can quickly produce anything that can be conceived in the mind --This was the Metaverse, the magical Renaissance of humanity.Magic visual technology, magic interactive technology, magic automation industry, a magic world will become a reality with the help of science and technology.

In fact, we have one foot in the door of this world. With the rapid iteration of algorithms and hardware, the era of processor content is approaching us.

Processor content, also known as computational content or virtual content, refers to content that can be generated independently of tools or sensors, and can be generated entirely by the processor.

The vision of the processor content era was that the user would just provide the idea, the CPU/GPU would do the rest for the user, and the user's imagination would be the boundary of content creation.

A combination of academia, industry, and capital is forming to make this vision a reality that will eventually make it easy for anyone to "turn their imagination into reality." GPT-3 shows that the intermediate process from idea to design can be zero; Deepfake-based products have mushroomed, reflecting the crude but passionate product impulses of entrepreneurs.

From images to video, from text to voice, we see that a great deal of content creation can take place directly between the creative unit (brain) and the computing unit (CPU/GPU)."Human brain + processor" began to replace "human brain + tool", content productivity achieved unprecedented revolutionary liberation.

Imagination realisation is fast becoming a huge industrial opportunity, and sniffing capital is already on the prowl.

Here are three things that I think will happen over the next few years or even a decade that people who care about this trend should take seriously:

First, the realization of imagination will take place first in the projection of the intracranial world into the extracranial world.

From video, animation, film, video, games, art, and even text and code, these mental projections will sink down on the average person. This means that there will be a large number of tools, platforms, SaaS services, algorithms, and hardware that will create a king in each of these verticals, and a general-purpose tool or platform that will be more likely to play a disruptive role.

Second, the realisation of imagination means the use of imagination to create income for themselves. People with rich imagination will become the leaders of some new professions.

Imaginators, who are the first to embrace new technologies and platforms, will be the winners in the content industry of the future. For the first time, ordinary people who like to "dream", even if they don't have outstanding professional skills, have a chance to become popular elites and play a major role in new content production relationships.

Using your imagination to create flow content will quickly become the way to build wealth. Jobs that are far from imagination will inevitably sink because of automation. The value of people will be reassessed, new professions will emerge, the value of imagination, the value of acting, the value of aesthetic perception, the value of empathy, will be transformed into the value of new professions, personality will become assets.

Third, the realization of imagination will also take place during the "physical editing" of the intracranial world to the extracranial world.

As 3D printing, nanobots and other technologies mature, ordinary people will gradually have the ability to create things like magicians, and more and more goods will only need to be sold with licenses, designs or services, leaving more and more of the final manufacturing and modification to the user. Componentized intermediaries will prevail, taking flexible production out of the factory and into the hands of ordinary people.


 The realization of imagination will become a sexy trillion-level new business.

Recommended Focus:

· Virtual Content Generation & NBSP;

3 d UGC

3 d printing

· Manufacturing UGC

5. Accelerating the world of content and refactoring the business world

The development of flow network and the continuous improvement of human imagination are speeding up the content of the world. No one knows if it has an end point, but one thing is certain: Metaverse is a future phase in the history of human content, its realization premised on a world full of content.

Human history can also be viewed asContent of the human worldIn the process.Human beings try to create a new world by daubing and transforming the world to seek self-satisfaction and the meaning of existence. This process is what I call the contentification of the world.

Tens of thousands of years ago on the European continent, hunters painted their prey and hunting scenes in the dome of the cave with skills comparable to Picasso, creating a rich spiritual world for themselves and their descendants.

More than 10,000 years ago, survivors of the cold Younger Dryas Ice Age gathered on a plain in northern Mesopotamia to carve and erect monuments weighing tens of tons, creating the incredible Gobekli Stone Henge. Hunters from all parts of the world, through the woods and the water and grass, came together here to worship, to sing, to talk, to meet, for two thousand years without a break.

More than 2,000 years ago, the three sages of Greece looked at each other in deep contemplation, trying to construct a worldview that would explain everything and respond to the growing perplexities of their wealthy city-state citizens. During this time in China, the pre-Qin dynasty, a hundred schools of thought arose, lobbying and quarreling, trying to compete to come up with the best design to create order for the world.

Today, there are few unexplored places on the blue planet. More and more, the extracranial world has become the stage for the intracranial world. From printed matter to screens to entire cities, the intracranial world already covers all the time and space that can be perceived.

In particular, with the continuous progress of science and technology, the great enrichment of material supply, the continuous improvement of social information, and the rapid popularization of content tools, the scene of the world's content has exceeded all people's imagination in the past few years.

Games are content.Minecraft rests on content created by countless brick-moving enthusiasts, and Fortress Night's Astronomical concert for Travis Scott shows that games aren't games anymore, they're platforms for content.

Goods are becoming content.Lipstick is not lipstick, but the imagination of beauty created by Li Jiaqi; Cars will not be cars, but closed Spaces of content where the mind can rest. The content attribute of the product is higher than the functional attribute. Business is content. Taobao is still providing efficiency, and Xiaohongshu is already selling content; Gym is still selling cards, and Keep is already selling self-discipline. Content nodes and content connections on commercial networks control an increasing amount of commercial traffic.

Cities are becoming content.Architecture is no longer just architecture, but a part of content; Shoping Mall is no longer just a place for shopping, but a place to please the mind. Entire cities are becoming arenas for content creation and presentation.

Politics is becoming content.The politician who skillfully encompass the minds of the masses with his content becomes the helmsman of the world. Being familiar with the management organization of the water conservancy system, it can control the flow of the water system freely and diligently. Popular culture has become a prominent subject of politics.

Everyone is contenting.People publish content in social media, define themselves by content and be defined by content, and sacrifice themselves on content platforms, allowing themselves to be shaped into containers of content.

A comprehensive content of the world, is slowly unveiled.

In terms of the business sector, we will see:The value system of goods is restructured.

With the continuous development of automation technology, the production cost of goods is constantly reduced, the choices of goods are constantly enriched, the differences in the value of basic functions of goods are continuously wiped out, and the content value of goods is constantly rising, becoming a new core value (rather than spillover value). People are paying for the value of the content they carry, not the basic utility, and designers and a new generation of product managers are playing an increasingly important role.

What Xiaomi paid 2 million yuan to Kenya Hara to design was not a logo, but a story about "Xiaomi is a top design product" that is more suitable for transmission and memory. The forum of fan friend is millet early content manufacture machine, lei jun is the stem source of whole net all the time, turn the original grind now zai. The millet content gene from the beginning is intrinsic, it is let millet stand in the future tide head surfboard.

See the blind box, hanfu, xi tea, BJD doll, all such. You could even say,It's not good to buy something that you can't share photos with. Good content value is the key to becoming hot style.

The value system of business has been restructured.

First, commercial competition will increasingly be about content, about content platforms, and about supernodes.

Secondly, any individual or organization, including ordinary consumers, traditional opinion leaders, online platforms, offline centralized communities, etc., may play the role of super nodes in a specific time and space, controlling and influencing more and more commercial traffic.

With the integration of commercial network and flow network, the connections between nodes will become flatter and the degree of nodes will become higher and higher. As a result, the emergence of super nodes will become more random and frequent, and the life cycle of super nodes will also be polarized. Supernodes that have difficulty forming global and persistent control over traffic will be short-lived.

As the supernodes that best understand the workings of flow networks, think tanks will play a more important role than at any time in human history.Think tank +AI is the uncrowned king of the future world.Traditional think tanks will wither if they fail to harness the power of AI. If new think tanks can harness the power of new humans and AI to explore the intracranial world and connect to the super-intracranial world, they could become a central player in every field.

Third, in the competition of commercial platforms, those who have more comprehensive and lasting influence on content nodes and content connections are more likely to win.

"Old" commercial platforms cannot retain users' attention simply by relying on the traditional advantages of commercial efficiency and cost performance. Their gut reaction will be to try to replenish the content genes, but the conflict with the inner genes is huge. Taobao no matter how to increase the proportion of video content, if the core is still "efficiency business super" "let the world not difficult to do business", it will lose its competitive advantage in the future.

"New" platforms hope to leverage content to win over their rivals, but the challenge of building the commercial infrastructure and systems for warehousing, logistics, and distribution is equally difficult to ignore. From Xiaohongshu to Douyin, the camp of e-commerce infrastructure has caused the actual industry barriers, whether it is to start a new business or join forces, there is still a long way to go.

At the same time, the value system of the company/business organization has also been restructured.

As the value system of the commodity is reconstructed, the value logic of the company/business organization will also undergo fundamental changes. The importance of product content attributes requires the management team to understand content and not just retail; The selection is also more from the content value rather than just the value of function; Shelf design should also consider more content priority; Moving line design is more about content experience; Market activities take the initiative to develop around content value and content dissemination law.

This requires a completely different model of talent competence, a completely different organizational structure, and a completely different model of management and assessment. In a fully content-rich world, companies that don't understand the new value system will be easily defeated by those that do. The new role of the CEO will be the chief content officer, and understanding content, the mental model of content transmission, and the laws of content networks will become the core competencies of enterprises and organizations.

Recommended Focus:

· Content-based business

· Content-based business platform

· Content technology and capabilities SAAS 

· Think tanks and think tanks + AI 

· Organizational change of O2O commercial production in an amusement park: distribution is challenging the corporate system

6. Transformation of production organization: Distributed is challenging the corporate system

Also under challenge is the production mode of company system. The distributed production of de-corporation will occupy an important position in more and more fields. The closer to mental production, the more obvious this trend. The closer we get to large physical production activities, the later this trend comes.

With the progress of technology, the threshold for the output of content from the intracranial world to the extracranial world is getting lower and lower, and more and more people are able to engage in creation or production. As the flow network becomes more and more efficient, it will be less and less difficult for producers to form spontaneous organizations.

In the area of content,Distributed production will become more mainstream.

Open Douban, search "my three body", will see a miracle. In 2014, a group of 50 or so "Three-Body" fans, powered entirely by love, spent eight months producing an animated film based on Minecraft, using only online communication.

What do they have? All they have is one Minecraft, and their respective professional abilities, and what's left is creativity and endless love. What are the chances of those who can make "My Three-Body Problem" in 2014 if they travel in time for 2024?

This kind of work is naturally completed under the gaze of netizens, who also participate in the production. This is a natural production mode of dialogue with the audience, with its own iterative characteristics of Internet products and its own traffic properties. This model is even a generation ahead of Netflix's "traditional" company-produced, closed-door models.

Such is the power of distributed production, and as imaginative realisation tools become more powerful, such things will gradually become the norm.Distributed production is one of the inevitable results of the content of the world.

But there's something missing. isThe absence of equity and commercial power -- power generated by love cannot be matched by power generated by money,Only by forming a robust ecology based on interest chains can things be sustainable.

There are two key issues: one is the identification of creative rights, the other is the distribution of creative rights. These two problems will be solved this way: Blockchain and similar technologies will enable creation to be immutably recorded, ensuring that the attribution of credit and profit is assured. It will be for different industries and fields to emerge a variety of rights and interests distribution schemes, survival of the fittest, and eventually form some public order and good customs, in their respective industries and fields to play a constraint and promote the role.

Once the rights and interests issue is solved, the works produced by distributed creation will either enter the "traditional" content business environment, or be directly commercialized by relying on the rights and interests recognition platform, thus forming an incentive closed-loop for creators.

With the comprehensive popularization of the professional capacity of various content production, the number of creators has increased greatly, and creators can easily form small production networks spontaneously and compete with traditional corporate organizations in cost, flexibility, quality, and competition for the attention of their works. Distributed content production will increasingly become mainstream, or at least as competitive as corporate production.

Distributed production is applicable not only to content production, but also to many other industries. De-corporatization of distributed production will become the mainstream at least in many "skill dependent" and "skill dependent" fields, and with the help of similar NFT systems, a new system of profit generation and flow will be formed to compete with the centralized production of company system until some balance is reached.

Of course, history is cyclical. On a global scale, distributed production will encourage the creation of voluntary unions, which will gradually turn into alliances, leading to a new round of centralization.

Recommended Focus:

· Blockchain-like technology

· Skill trading platform

· Asset trading platform

7. New infrastructure in three dimensions: preparation for entering the new world

First of all, the new infrastructure under this issue has three dimensions: the physical infrastructure, the new infrastructure in the digital world, and the super-new infrastructure in the mental world.

As the "intracranial world" and the "extracranial world" are fully integrated, one of the characteristics of the future world is that most of the time"What is real and what is not". Specifically: yesData is unreal, feelings are unreal, the world is unreal.

Obviously, in the age of neuronal content, the distinction between reality and void can be achieved at the neuronal level. But before that, a lot of new infrastructure is needed. From hardware to software, from services to platforms, from positions to occupations, there will be a large number of new infrastructure, new forms of business and new occupations.

Data is not false or real, which mainly means that part of the data from the real layer, such as physical data and social data, will be able to maintain coherence and consistency in the virtual layer. It also means that some of the data generated in the virtual layer, such as virtual social data and physical simulation data, will be able to act on/project back to the real layer in some form. In addition, there is a subset of data, such as the physical/mental data of an individual, that can pass through the physical and virtual layers without distinguishing between them.

The realization of data without distinction between false and real requires a large amount of hardware infrastructure and service infrastructure in data collection, calculation, synchronization, storage, etc. The demand for intimate sensors, intimate computing, intimate firewalls, and private clouds will continue to grow for years to come.

We can foresee, electronic organs/intelligent accessories and human companion relationship, will beThe first step towards a cyberspecies.

The reason why we call it an electronic organ/smart accessory rather than a "wearable device" is that humans can only tolerate a hijacked occupation of the body by at most one device (e.g., mobile phone occupying the hand), and other devices must be present as needed, as free from the body and as lost in the senses as possible. Equipment to retire to accessories and even organs category, can be more mounted on the human body.

From smart watches to intelligent bracelet, from intelligent glasses to intelligent artificial eye, from smart ring to intelligent patch, from skin to electronic tattoo, from in vitro to subcutaneous mass aesthetic will be in the process of cyber step by step, insist on the new technology of aesthetic fundamentalists necessary convenience and enveloped vulnerable. Electronic organs/intelligent accessories will become daily necessities like today's clothing.

Solutions for the storage and security of personal data will become rigid consumer products that billions of people need. Due to more and more dimensions of personal data, the granularity is getting lower and lower, the description and reduction ability of personal data to people will be getting higher and higher, and the consequences of data leakage will be more and more serious, light is encountered by "cloud thieves" money two empty, heavy is encountered by "cloud killer" violent death on the street. The centralization of the current public cloud makes it naturally vulnerable to focus fire attacks and a single point of control. Private clouds or some kind of distributed cloud completely controlled by users, such as distributed encrypted storage services based on blockchain keys, will become the standard for everyone. At the same time, products, professions and organizations that can provide services related to the security of personal data will also become a daily presence.

Feeling is indistinguishable from reality, meaning that it is difficult to distinguish between reality and reality through the senses, and that emotions and emotions are increasingly synchronized between the physical and the virtual. It is a process with almost no end, but we can roughly divide it into two stages. The primary stage corresponds to the realization of sensory immersion, and the two main challenges are "visual and physical separation" and "movement and physical separation". The higher stage corresponds to the realization of spiritual immersion, and the main challenge is to "combine feelings without distinction between the real and the real" and "emotions and affective feelings without distinction between the real and the real".

Mentioned visual experience regardless of the actual situation, we can immediately think of a series of problems: environmental awareness, light perception, material, environment modeling, the actual illumination consistency rendering, the actual material consistency rendering, the actual physical consistency, VR/AR portable devices, iris projection, environment on the surface of the projection imaging/glass/HUD, holographic imaging... And so on. This is a very large coverage of the topic, each subdivision of the field can grow a hidden champion. Similarly roughly, we can break them down into hardware, software, and content. Technology research and production related to optical sensing and optical imaging, engine technology research and development related to physical simulation and graphic rendering, and products and industries related to content design and content generation are the three most dependent cornerstone for realizing visual perception without distinction between reality and reality.

And in particular, I want to emphasize,3D is going to be the basic universal technology,Leading engine companies, such as Unreal, are expected to build basic services at the OS level. At the same time, the vertical subdivision of 3D technology continues to improve, virtual people, physical simulation, renderer, optimization services... All things in the world are infinitely close to the real physical world. All this depends on the efforts of massive 3D technology and 3D artistic talents. The demand for 3D professionals will continue to grow rapidly from now until well into the future. It's not enough for young people to just learn Python, they should learn 3D as well.

In contrast, the issue of proprioceptive consonance, "perception of motion as neither real nor real," is less pressing, but it is a major challenge because it is highly related to visual perception. In order to realize the recognition of motion perception, a series of problems, such as posture synchronization, motion synchronization and proprioception synchronization, must be solved. We don't know if there are any new technologies in the future that can better solve these problems. As far as the current technological routes are concerned, motion controllers based on skin bioelectrical sensing, intelligent clothing based on electronic fabrics, and motion space mapping system based on some kind of exoskeleton are competitive directions.

Finally, with a lot of new infrastructure, the world will eventually become a world without data or perception. No matter how many different kinds of virtual worlds there will be in the future, at least one of them -- the flow backbone of the day -- will overlap and merge with the real world in such a way that it can't be separated. The world of the merged is Metaverse.

It is the inheritance, transformation, transcendence and blending of the old world. It is a new world. In this new world, everything we used to be familiar with will be inherited, transformed, transcended and blended into a new stage. In particular, many basic rules we rely on will be shaken from the foundation and need us to maintain, modify, rebuild and even overthrow. The most difficult infrastructure, always at the rule level, is going to be a huge challenge that we have to overcome, and it's going to be our last chance to prepare safely for the age of neuronal content.

Recommended Focus:

· Intelligent accessories and electronic organs

· Personalized virtual people

· Off-screen imaging

· Physics and world simulation

· Advanced universal/vertical 3D engine

8. Neuronet: The Ultimate Form was born

With these three new infrastructures, with further brain research, with advances in materials science and precision manufacturing, we will one day have neuron protocol based connections between processors and neurons, and between neurons. Neuronets will become a reality.

More recently, Musk's Neuralink has created a "psychic" monkey called Pager. In the video, Pager showed his excellent ability of "mental operation" and prediction, which surprised me very much.The way he concentrates on the game makes him look like a child in flow rather than a monkey scratching its head.

By using thousands of microelectrodes implanted in Pager's brain, the system can capture his electrical information in real time and transmit it wirelessly to an external receiver in real time. After simple training on Pager with a physical joystick, data acquisition, data analysis and pattern recognition are completed, the system can identify the "operation intention" of Pager from the information received by the receiver, and convert the operation intention into the movement control signal in the game, so that Pager can control the barrier on the screen across space. Playing pool with great ease.

In Pager, a connection has already been established between the processor and the neuron. The door to the unknown is thrown open. All the old things we take for granted, human nature, economy, politics, morality, law, culture, civilization... Will be pushed to the edge of a foggy cliff, waiting for the final step, the fall or the sublimation.

In the areas of paralysis, disability, and serious illness, which are the most vulnerable to ethical and moral disruption, we can expect to see a growing number of companies like Neuralink introducing practical applications of brain-machine technologies. Patients with paralysis, visual impairment, hearing impairment, movement disorder, brain disease and even mental illness are all calling for such technology. The huge commercial benefits and immeasurable social value will promote the development of brain-machine technology more and more quickly.

After the corresponding technology has reached a certain stage of development, they will also take the lead in obtaining both depth and breadth of large-scale application in the military field. The military can more easily break through the ethical and moral cognitive barriers. Neuron-linking technology is expected to be used at the Special Operations team level, where operations require high levels of synchronization and complexity, or in staff and command systems. Further,Like the early ARPANET, advanced nations will establish cross-domain neural networks throughout their armed forcesIn this process, OSI architecture similar to the traditional Internet and corresponding layers of protocols/specifications are established.

When neural networks attempt to scale into the civilian realm, they will face both a huge commercial push and a social/political backlash that will be fiercer than ever before. People who embrace the neural network are likely to gain higher learning ability, memory ability and even intelligence enhancement while facing safety, privacy, moral and ethical risks as well as physical and spiritual dilemmas, thus forming a realistic competitive advantage. And those who resist neural networks, whether out of species pride, ethical preference, moral insistence or simple fear, tend to fall into the fundamentalist camp.The concept of race is likely to thus embrace new definitions and new conflicts.

But new technologies always find a way through. Desire will eventually defeat hesitation and set fire to a prairie. The entire network of neurons will eventually become an artificial ocean of the mind, encompassing all people.

In the age of neuronal content, we'll see these things happen:

First, flow networks are in the ultimate extreme form we can imagine.

Flow content generation and distribution occur directly at the level of neural networks. The bondage of the content medium gradually receded, and the connection between the intracranial world no longer needed to be mediated by the extracranial world. For the first time, the intracranial world could be opened to the outside without reservation. Mindverse becomes a real life scene, and humans migrate en masse into Metaverse.

Second, the realization of the imagination in its ultimate form.

In a neural network, imagination can almost be "objectified" in a sense, and imagination can be directly transmitted, projected, understood and modified, with almost no "realization" process. At the same time, the modification of the intracranial world to the extracranial world is increasingly realized by the robot controlled by the neural network, and the efficiency of the imaginative physical realization is maximized.

Third, the content of the world has reached its ultimate state.

The most important business activity will be the content transaction transmitted directly on the neuron network. The neuron network is the market, and the whole world is running around the content activity. The concept of "commodity is content, content is commodity" has completely become a reality on the neuron network. Man, as the content animal, has for the first time created for himself a rich grassland.

Fourth, a new world shape.

The assumption of "human" in contemporary economics will face great challenges in the age of neuronal content. In a complete MindVerse, the behavior of individuals, the interactive relationship between individuals and the system, the new social organization structure based on MindNet, the new power system based on MindNet, etc., will be too different from the past, which will bring fundamental impact to various economic theories we are familiar with.

With the development of chaos theory and complex science, MindNet will be a network in which individual nodes have theoretical cognition of the complex system they are in and use such cognition to guide their behaviors in the system, observe and understand the feedback of the system, and further adjust their behaviors. While the super node or management node of the network has the same above characteristics, it also has the huge network energy which may be far away, and can exert a strong influence and even control on the network.

This situation implies greater stability and instability than at any time in our history. From economics to politics, from law to morality, we all need new interpretations, new designs and new schemes.

Fifth, mankind is facing a complete existential crisis.

Photo: Gerd Altmann@Pixabay

When all the false or true regardless, when all the feelings can be generated, as all desires can meet through the flow of cheap content consumption, when love is analyzed to explain the activity of neurons, when love is from the point of view of biology and sociology of deconstruction, when consciousness appear to be more and more mechanical, when free will gradually lose the sacred aura,What will man be? How will you get there?Would you rather go back to the Stone Age to find a way to restore yourself? Or do we abandon the myth of self, the pride of the species, and seek the meaning of intelligence? Or do you sink into the ocean of minds created by flow networks and seek to evolve into a new species?

Different people will hold on differently, and the world will fall into the chaos of behavior due to the chaos of thought, which will be accelerated by the existence of a network of neurons. This is the first time in human history that we are faced with a systemic, universal, and thorough existential crisis, which has a high probability of triggering a crisis of the human species.

After thousands of years of reckless forays into the future, with hubristic confidence in the resilience and pendulum power of our species, it may not work this time. The age of neuronal content is the first time that human beings need to be prepared theoretically and competently before they have a chance to face the future safely.

Recommended Focus:

· OSI architecture of the neural network

· Brain-computer interface

· Neuron gateway

· Mental firewall and privacy security

· Moral and ethical reconstruction

9. Conclusion

So far, we've finished with seven thoughts from different angles. Every thought is based on a situation or phenomenon that must be encountered on the way to the future. They correspond to seven paths for the curious and the adventurous, each pointing in a common direction from a different Angle to a common future, waiting to be discovered, explored and conquered.

Metaverse is a description and reference to that future. We use it to create consensus and create bubbles. We use it to guide, to carry confidence, to carry the power of words. It is important to recognize that Metaverse is not describing the results of a violent revolution, but rather pointing in a direction of incremental evolution.

The curve of change in every field will be roughly smooth, and there is no single event or point in time where we can lay a marker for the future. Therefore, none of the brave trudging along these seven roads has a clear roadmap and destination, just as the above thoughts are meant to inspire more thought than to give incontestable answers. But this is the greatest opportunity for entrepreneurs -- to line the track yourself. This is the adventurer's favorite - a land of opportunity and risk.

Is Metaverse a game, a platform, the next WeChat/Douyin/Kuaishou or B?

Of course not. Metaverse is just drawing a future, but many see it as a product, not to mention a little girl.

Will the concept of Metaverse spawn a new version of MicroBeat B?

Of course. There will be many "great" companies on the way to the future. They will exist, and they are already showing up.    

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