Meta cosmic alchemy
Since 2021, metaverse, as a term created from science fiction, has suddenly become popular all over the world. There are countless articles and comments on what the meta universe is, how to realize it in technology, industrial ecology and so on. I want to look at something deeper in the meta universe from the perspective of economics.
There is a profound background to why the Internet industry is now hyping the concept of "meta universe", or why Facebook took the lead in proposing the concept of "meta universe". In recent years, with the decline of network hardware price, Internet penetration has increased rapidly. According to（
https://internetworldstats.com/stats.htm ）According to statistics, by the end of 2020, the number of Internet users in the world was close to 5.1 billion, and the Internet penetration rate was 64.7%. From 2000 to 2020, the number of Internet users increased by 1312%. It can be expected that in the coming period of time, the incremental dividend of Internet users will be smaller and smaller. How to revitalize the stock of users, new applications are needed in the field of Internet and digital economy to stimulate the market. Improving users' sense of experience and continuing to tap user traffic dividends have become a difficult problem across the Internet market. In this sense, the industry needs a killer application to stimulate the market.
The concept of meta universe integrates many technologies in the current digital field, including VR technology, AR technology, block chain technology, artificial intelligence, etc. these technologies themselves also provide support for the concept from science fiction into daily application. From the perspective of technology application, although the above-mentioned technology itself has gradually matured in recent years, it is lack of application, and it is difficult to create a good development path and industrial ecology. "Meta universe" is not a single thing, but a comprehensive technological innovation operation system. If the application of meta universe can be widely popularized, it will also find the application direction for these technologies, which will form a virtuous cycle of technology application.
From the perspective of specific industries, although the game industry is still in a high-speed growth channel, it is affected by various factors, and its growth rate is bound to enter a low growth cycle. The immersive experience of "meta universe" connects the real world with the virtual world, brings new game modes such as "play to earn", provides an unprecedented playing method for the game, can bring new users and increment to the game industry, and promote it to enter the next life development cycle. From the perspective of origin, the meta universe itself is directly related to immersive games. In this case, the concept of metauniverse is popular from the game industry, which is its due meaning.
From the perspective of enterprises, although roblox is the first share of the "meta universe", Facebook has an earlier layout in the meta universe and a more comprehensive ecology. On October 28, 2021, Facebook announced to change its name to meta, indicating its determination to fully enter the meta universe. Why Facebook? Although Facebook is the world's largest social platform, its core revenue model is still advertising, especially personalized advertising using big data. In recent years, this business model has been challenged by stricter privacy protection in various countries. Jay Lanier, the founder of VR technology, wrote that companies like Facebook are mastering the most valuable information today - the social graph. This has brought huge profits, but when Facebook tries to rely on the social relationship map as its core profit point, it is already creating a moral disaster.
In fact, governments have begun to investigate the abuse of massive personal data by Facebook. On June 23, 2020, the German Federal Supreme Court ruled that the abuse of data by Facebook violated German competition law. In June 2021, the European Commission and the UK competition and market authority (CMA) conducted an investigation on Facebook's data monopoly. The reason is that Facebook uses data in a way that distorts competition, especially the advertising data collected from advertisers, in order to compete with advertisers in Facebook's active markets such as classified advertising, This gives Facebook an undue competitive advantage. Apple has also changed its privacy policy, which has had an adverse impact on Facebook's data utilization and other issues.
Therefore, Facebook needs a new concept and new model to get rid of the privacy dilemma it faces. The novelty of the concept of metauniverse, together with the reserves of Facebook's acquisition of oculus, a virtual reality company, and the launch of horizon, a VR social platform, make Facebook more urgent in metauniverse. On December 9, 2021, Facebook officially announced that it would open its virtual reality world horizon worlds to anyone aged 18 or over in the United States and Canada. Previously, users need to be invited to join horizon worlds. Facebook's meta universe layout has fully blossomed.
Another question is, why can the meta universe be welcomed by users? The meta universe constructs a virtual world that is both connected and different from the real world. This world solves the problem of human nature distortion caused by the pure virtual world. In "you are not a thing: these people enslaved by the Internet", Jay Lanier wrote that the development of the Internet will make human beings non-human and produce "cybertotalist" or "digital totalitarian". Due to the pure virtuality of the online world, "drive by anonymity" has produced a large number of cyber violence and played a unique role in the spread of modern cyber terror. Yuanuniverse connects the real world with the virtual world, and uses blockchain and other technologies to realize decentralized governance, which is of great significance to meet the needs of consumers.
The core of the meta universe is to meet people's spiritual needs. At present, with the great improvement of the automation level of material production, on the one hand, people's material needs have been greatly met. On the other hand, how to meet people's spiritual needs and how to form more perfect social relations have become the theme of society.
In 1995, Giddens published the social thought of abundance, poverty and post scarcity, and put forward the idea of "post scarcity society" aimed at surpassing poverty; In the post scarcity economic era, industrial productivity has developed enough to meet human needs. There is no lack of material necessities in daily life, and the satisfaction of spiritual needs has become the top priority.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory holds that there are two different needs in the human value system. One is the instinct or impulse that gradually weakens along the rising direction of the biological lineage, which is called low-level needs and physiological needs. One is the potential or need that gradually appears with biological evolution, which is called advanced need. Advanced needs are psychological to a great extent and have a direct relationship with intangible consumption. Maslow also proposed that in the creative process of people's self realization, there is a so-called "peak experience" emotion. However, in real life, emotional satisfaction and self realization are limited, and the meta universe provides such a new space, which provides the basis for people to realize their advanced needs.
From the perspective of production, the meta universe has changed the dichotomy of production and consumption in real society, so as to bring the concept of "prosumer" into cyberspace. As early as 1980, American futurist Alvin Toffler predicted in his book the third wave that the boundary between producers and consumers would gradually blur and the two would integrate into one. In the book the revolution of wealth published in 2006, he put forward the concept of "promoting economy". In the specific space of meta universe, many consumers can integrate production and consumption and turn the consumption process into production. This is closely related to the decentralized governance mechanism of the meta universe. In games with the concept of meta universe such as axie infinity, players can either obtain the corresponding pass according to the duration of their game, or can obtain the unique equipment NFT (non homogeneous token) by playing strange upgrades. Some blockchain platforms have also launched corresponding decentralized games to enable players to earn money while playing. This model has produced the now very popular gamefi (which can be literally translated into game Finance), because the NFT earned by game players is unique and indivisible, which is conducive to trading and transfer, and even exists as investment goods. It has also produced Astra guide, meta Gaming Guide and other relevant institutions. On decentraland, the sandbox and other platforms, players can obtain corresponding benefits through virtual land development. Many players are more willing to play on this platform.
From the perspective of future development, the application of the meta universe is far more than games, including work, life and social networking. It may be realized through the meta universe, which will determine that the meta universe will have an increasing impact on people's lives. Of course, we should also see that there are a lot of problems in the development of the meta universe, such as financial speculation, technical bottlenecks, incorrect input and output, and so on. We will further explain them in this series
In short, from the perspective of economics, the logic behind the emergence of the meta universe is very clear. As an economist, I always think that the economic society makes us more aware of the world. This reminds me of a passage written by Keynes, one of the greatest economists in the 20th century, in his general theory: the thoughts of economists and political philosophers, whether right or wrong, are much larger than we usually understand. Indeed, the world is in the hands of a few people. Those pragmatists who believed that they would not be influenced by any talkers bowed down and became slaves to the thoughts of some late economists.