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At the end of October this year, Facebook’s founder and CEO Zach Burke proposed in an online meeting that Facebook will fully transform into a “meta platform” and create a “metaverse” from many aspects. )-A “meta universe” that combines “immersive” virtual and reality.
After that, despite being accompanied by doubts and criticisms, the term “meta universe” has undoubtedly become a hot spot that has been paid attention and sought after by capital, social media, and the general public, and has also been given different interpretations and interpretations by various technology platforms and companies. The prices of related concept stocks, digital currencies, and even game products have also risen sharply.
Fantasy and reality
At present, although people have various interpretations of the concept of the meta universe, they are all expanding their rhetoric with similar theories and techniques. When we carefully examine these two levels, we will find that these interpretations lack a real theoretical and technical basis.
In terms of theory, people generally trace the concept of “meta universe” back to science fiction and movies as the source of their theories. This includes the 1992 science fiction novel “Avalanche” or the movie “The Matrix” series and “Number One Player”. These works portray the possible dimensions of people’s future living conditions, that is, the boundary between virtual and reality is difficult to distinguish in people’s consciousness, or the two will be overlapped to shape people’s consciousness. Only technology can turn fantasy into reality and apply theory. This leads to another key aspect of the meta universe: technology. However, this is also the most criticized part.
Whether it is the equipment that people need to wear when Zuckerberg gives a speech, or technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, they are not born out of nowhere and are deeply novel. The so-called three “R” concept even appeared earlier than the aforementioned science fiction novels.
By definition, VR (virtual reality) generates a virtual world through simulation, and AR (augmented reality) uses technology to superimpose virtual information into the real environment, giving people the same sense of time and space. MR (Mixed Reality) is considered to be a further superposition of VR and AR technology. Compared with AR, the difference in putting virtual information into the real physical environment is that MR has more interactivity and can speak realistic scene projections. Into the virtual world. In fact, the application of VR has become a household name in the form of entertainment games. In contrast, the latter two (AR and MR) have become a potential possibility for the application of these technologies due to the popularity of online meetings and home office after the epidemic. Zuckerberg has promised people in the new world, in fact, there is no Beyond the highlights of the Oasis in “Ready Player One”. The only difference is that the meta-universe in reality still lacks the technology to realize this vision.
This is not the first time a technology company has promised people to launch a utopia. In 2012, Google launched the interactive device Google Glass, which is also widely sought after, and even Time magazine named it the best invention of 2012. Later, the development of this product was unsatisfactory. Not only was Google Glass prohibitive due to the excessively high price ($1,500), it was also accused of easily infringing on personal privacy. However, the fundamental reason for the failure of this product is that it can be applied in a very limited range, and the cost of implementing the application is very expensive.
From Facebook to Meta universe
In Zuckerberg’s speech, he mentioned that the function of “meta universe”, in addition to the type of public space like Facebook in the past, will also pay more attention to security and privacy. In a private space, users “can decide when to get along with other people” and “when to be alone”.
Since Facebook was founded in 2004, this technology company has been criticized for its infringement of human privacy. In the movie “Social Network” that alludes to the way Facebook started, the founder of the technology company used the stolen photos of Harvard University girls to place it on the FaceMash website, which attracted a large number of views and became famous in one fell swoop. In 2020, Facebook has also been criticized by many mainstream media for being the main hotbed of political polarization and various conspiracy theories in the United States, and providing harmful information to minors.
At the beginning of October of this year, just before Zuckerberg announced the concept of Metaverse, the former product manager of Facebook’s whistleblower, Frances Haugen, disclosed his true identity through CBS. Prior to this, she had already given Facebook’s internal information and documents to the Wall Street Journal, and publicly pointed out that Facebook did not supervise and process information harmful to teenagers for traffic. In addition, when the political consulting firm “Cambridge Analytica” was accused of using Facebook’s 50 million user privacy data to affect the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US election, Facebook paid US$5 billion to the US Federal Trade Commission for the scandal. The settlement fee is only to protect Zach Burke from personal liability. At the same time, some investors in Facebook are currently suing Facebook. Hogan pointedly pointed out that when public interests conflict with Facebook’s interests, “Facebook always chooses to optimize its own interests, such as making more money.” What she said, speaking with Zach Burke in Metaverse Quite the opposite, the founder now promises people, “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”
Facebook’s success at that time was largely a redefinition of people’s social interaction mode, that is, the transformation of information exchange in human society from a one-way dominant media information transmission to an interactive process. This change is based on the current model of the network economy. The result of development in the past two decades also requires people to reflect on why in this seemingly scattered and diversified information interaction, there are fewer and fewer voices for public rationality and effective communication. Companies such as Facebook not only lack Promoting people’s social network relationship positively, on the contrary, has become a small personal emotional anxiety, the fuse of the social-political crisis, and has even become a monopoly power that influences people’s cognition and profit?
In 2020, an article in the “Wall Street Journal” entitled “How did Zuckerberg learn to play politics?” pointed out that during Trump’s administration, Zuckerberg became an active political trader. Political contributions attempt to suppress their competitors such as Apple and TikTok by political means. These facts all force people to ask, is Facebook creating a more reasonable public space for human interaction in today’s meta-universe? Or is it fundamentally destroying it?
The thinker Habermas has recently made a critical reflection on the public communication theory he put forward in the past. In today’s digital age, does this virtual and anonymous social public tool have a real public domain structure? According to Habermas, this kind of virtual space no longer has the inclusiveness and representativeness of the real public domain. It is more like a means of communication that originally belonged to the private sphere. It was expanded into the public sphere, and different voices were blocked, and rational dialogue and thinking were eliminated. In the end, only what it advertised was regarded as truth and everything else. It is false, which makes the communication between people in the consumer society more polarized, and even eventually distorts the real world. Habermas gave an example that the former US President Trump used social media to win his supporters every day. As a result, even his entire political party needed to adjust itself to adapt to the president’s self-recognition. Know.
Epidemic and technological society
In history, every pandemic has not only brought pain and great impact to human society, but also triggered changes in thought and technology. For example, the outbreak of the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century has become a European literature and art on the one hand. The natural-social background in which the revival and religious reforms originated, on the other hand, forced the emergence of technological innovation because of the sharp decline in population.
Similarly, today’s epidemic has a huge impact on many traditional industries. In North America and Europe, the popularity of home office and online shopping after the epidemic has hit the traditional real estate industry, especially in the rental of office and commercial buildings. From this point of view, the interactive office proposed in Metaverse undoubtedly has the potential for development. In addition, the vigorous investment in biopharmaceuticals and other technologies caused by the epidemic will undoubtedly become a driving force for human technological progress. However, although we can think about various new concepts and technologies such as meta-universe and blockchain with hope, which will possibly bring us a better future, this optimism does not mean not to increase Blind obedience and pursuit of reflection.
The sociologist of technology Mumford once reminded us: “Humans themselves have become machines before they have perfected complex machinery to reflect their talents and interests.” From a historical point of view, the development of technology has led to organizations. Transformed mankind has not made a single technological advancement, nor has it deepened the stratification and organization of human society. This is a dilemma in the technological society. In the fashionable words of the moment, everyone seems to be a machine stuck in an algorithm.
Therefore, we are still facing such problems today, such as “Can the decentralized technology of blockchain really affect the external social structure in the same way?” Or has it been re-hierarchized by the external social structure? ? Similarly, we can ask whether the metaverse is still a projection of people’s subjective desires in the real world, or is it really a new oasis? How will it shape our public communication model and structure? …
In the first “The Matrix” by the Wachowski sisters, the movie has presented us with a challenge: there, the beautiful material reality that people experience, and people’s perception are all simulated by that supercomputer. Unreal mirror. However, when the protagonist Neo wakes up from this virtual illusion, he is in front of Chicago after the destruction of the World War, all in dilapidated conditions and ruined walls.
At this time, Morpheus, the leader of resistance to mainframe computers, greeted Neo, the savior, and said mockingly, “Welcome to the great desert of the real world (reality)!” Murphy, who is familiar with Western allusions The name Si is the sleeping god among the Roman gods, and he is in charge of people’s dreams. In the eyes of psychoanalytic theory, this seems to be a metaphor for the future of mankind. Once we break away from the illusion of utopia and face the desert of reality, at least we need dreams to become the great blueprint and hope in the living space. Just as the meta-universe embodies our inner desire, Bloch said in “The Principle of Hope”, “Only when the road is correct and carefully proceeded, we will value the power of this desire.” In the end, what the meta-universe brings to us is the integration of social relations, the diversified oasis, or the more closed fragments. This is not only a technical problem, but depends on every one of us who is longing and worried. .
(Note: Li Jin, scholar of intellectual history; Ma Li, sociologist. This article only represents the author’s personal views. Editor-in-charge email [email protected])