The billionaire battle for the metaverse

Forget space. The race is on to take people beyond reality

YOU HAVE to hand it to Mark Zuckerberg. When the founder of Facebook announced in October that he was changing the name of the social-media network’s parent company to Meta Platforms in order to help create an alternative digital reality known as the metaverse, he was mercilessly mocked. To some, he was generating a?smokescreen to distract attention from a political furore. To others, he was merely the latest middle-aged tech billionaire to chase a childhood fantasy, much as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk were doing with space rockets.

mercilessly/?m??s?l?sli/ adv. 殘忍地；毫無(wú)慈悲地

smokescreen 煙幕（用以掩蓋真相的言行）；障眼法；（戰(zhàn)斗中用以掩蔽士兵、艦船等的）煙幕

furore n. /fju?r??ri/ ~ (about/over sth) 群情激憤；騷動(dòng)；轟動(dòng)?? His novel about Jesus caused a furore among Christians. 他關(guān)于耶穌的小說(shuō)激起了基督教徒的公憤。

And yet his timing was impeccable. Since October searches on Google for “metaverse” have soared. Wall Street is?fanning the hype. According to Bernstein, a broker, the term cropped up 449 times in third-quarter earnings calls, up from 100 in the second quarter. It says markets with potential annual revenue of at least $2trn could be disrupted by the metaverse. Jefferies, a bank, says that though the phenomenon may be more than a decade away, it has the potential to disrupt “almost everything in human life”.

Impeccable /?m?pek?bl/無(wú)錯(cuò)誤的；無(wú)瑕疵的；完美的

fan the ?flames (of sth)?煽風(fēng)點(diǎn)火；煽動(dòng)（情緒）??His writings fanned the flames of racism. 他的寫作煽起了種族主義情緒。

hype /ha?p/ 名詞（電視、廣播等中言過(guò)其實(shí)的）促銷廣告，促銷討論?marketing/media hype 夸張的促銷╱媒體廣告

Hype動(dòng)詞：?~ sth (up) ( informal disapproving ) 夸張地宣傳（某事物）?This week his much hyped new movie opens in London. 本周他那部被大肆炒作的新電影在倫敦上映。

crop up：突然出現(xiàn)，（尤指意外地）出現(xiàn)，發(fā)生??I'll be late—something's cropped up at home. 我要晚一點(diǎn)來(lái)，家里突然出了點(diǎn)事。

earnings call：財(cái)報(bào)電話會(huì)議

Other tech giants like Microsoft have set out plans to head for the metaverse. But it is big firms still under the control of their founders that may become the most ardent evangelists.?Mr Zuckerberg, with a net worth close to $125bn and almost total control of a company valued at $908bn, is the most prominent. Others include Jensen Huang of Nvidia,?a maker of graphics processors worth $722bn, and Pony Ma of Tencent, the Chinese tech giant worth $550bn,whose gaming investment portfolio includes a 40% stake in Epic Games, owner of "Fortnite"one of the world's most popular games. Epic's founder, Tim Sweeney, is himself a force to be reckoned with. He recently told Bloomberg that the metaverse was a multitrillion-dollar opportunity, and that companies like his were in a race to get to a billion users in order?to set the metaverse's standards for the future.

ardent adj. /?ɑ:dnt/ 熱烈的；激情的?? an ardent supporter of European unity 歐洲統(tǒng)一的熱烈支持者

evangelist n. /??v?nd??l?st/ 1.（基督教）布道者—see also televangelist；2. 福音作者，圣史（寫作《圣經(jīng)》中四部福音的人）

?to be reckoned with：認(rèn)真考慮，不可忽視，對(duì)待

It is shaping up to become a billionaire battle similar to the Bezos-Musk space race. Instead of rocket science, it will be fought with reality-bending headsets, blockchains, cryptocurrencies and mind-frazzling amounts of computing power.

Cryptocurrency /?kr?pt??k?r?nsi/ ：加密貨幣

Forget space. The race is on to take people beyond reality

YOU HAVE to hand it to Mark Zuckerberg. When the founder of Facebook announced in October that he was changing the name of the social-media network’s parent company to Meta Platforms in order to help create an alternative digital reality known as the metaverse, he was mercilessly mocked. To some, he was generating a?smokescreen to distract attention from a political furore. To others, he was merely the latest middle-aged tech billionaire to chase a childhood fantasy, much as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk were doing with space rockets.

你不得不服扎克伯格。當(dāng)臉書創(chuàng)始人在10月宣布將社交媒體網(wǎng)絡(luò)的母公司名字改成“元平臺(tái)”以便于創(chuàng)造一個(gè)可以替代數(shù)字世界的“元宇宙”時(shí)，他被無(wú)情地嘲笑了。對(duì)某些人而言，這是他轉(zhuǎn)移政治風(fēng)波注意力放出的煙霧彈。對(duì)另外一些人而言，他不過(guò)是追逐童年夢(mèng)想的中年科技富豪，如同亞馬遜的貝索斯和特斯拉的馬斯克一樣，他們?cè)谠旎鸺?/span>

And yet his timing was impeccable. Since October searches on Google for “metaverse” have soared. Wall Street is?fanning the hype. According to Bernstein, a broker, the term cropped up 449 times in third-quarter earnings calls, up from 100 in the second quarter. It says markets with potential annual revenue of at least $2trn could be disrupted by the metaverse. Jefferies, a bank, says that though the phenomenon may be more than a decade away, it has the potential to disrupt “almost everything in human life”.

然而，他選的時(shí)間無(wú)懈可擊。自10月以來(lái)，谷歌上“元宇宙”的搜索量激增。華爾街也在推波助瀾。據(jù)券商伯恩斯坦所說(shuō)，“元宇宙”在第三季度電話財(cái)報(bào)會(huì)議中突然出現(xiàn)了449次，而第二季度采100次。據(jù)說(shuō)有至少2萬(wàn)億的潛在市場(chǎng)年收益被元宇宙打亂。杰富瑞銀行表示雖然元宇宙的出現(xiàn)要等至少十幾年，但是它有顛覆“人類生活方方面面”的潛力。

Other tech giants like Microsoft have set out plans to head for the metaverse. But it is big firms still under the control of their founders that may become the most ardent evangelists.?Mr Zuckerberg, with a net worth close to $125bn and almost total control of a company valued at $908bn, is the most prominent. Others include Jensen Huang of Nvidia,?a maker of graphics processors worth $722bn, and Pony Ma of Tencent, the Chinese tech giant worth $55obn,whose gaming investment portfolio includes a 40% stake in Epic Games, owner of "Fortnite"one of the world's most popular games. Epic's founder, Tim Sweeney, is himself a force to be reckoned with. He recently told Bloomberg that the metaverse was a multitrillion-dollar opportunity, and that companies like his were in a race to get to a billion users in order?to set the metaverse's standards for the future.

其他科技巨頭如微軟也制定計(jì)劃進(jìn)軍“元宇宙”。但這些目前仍掌控在創(chuàng)始人手中的巨頭公司有可能變成“元宇宙”的狂熱布道者。有著資本凈值約1250億元和掌控著估值約9080億美元公司的扎克伯格是其中的佼佼者。其他如市值7220億元的Nvidia（輝達(dá)-全球最大圖形處理器芯片廠商）的黃仁勛(Jensen Huang，美籍華人)，中國(guó)科技巨頭、市值5500億元的騰訊公司馬化騰，騰訊的游戲投資組合包括Epic Games（全球最負(fù)盛名的游戲制作團(tuán)隊(duì)）40%的股份，Epic Games是全球最流行游戲之一“堡壘之夜”的開發(fā)者。Epic的創(chuàng)始人Tim Sweeney，也是一位需要認(rèn)真對(duì)待的選手。他告訴彭博社，元宇宙有著接近幾萬(wàn)億美元的機(jī)會(huì)，像他公司一樣的企業(yè)正在競(jìng)爭(zhēng)獲得十億多用戶以爭(zhēng)取為未來(lái)的“元宇宙”制定標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。

It is shaping up to become a billionaire battle similar to the Bezos-Musk space race. Instead of rocket science, it will be fought with reality-bending headsets, blockchains, cryptocurrencies and mind-frazzling amounts of computing power.

這逐漸變成了如同貝索斯-馬斯克太空競(jìng)賽一樣的億萬(wàn)富翁之戰(zhàn)。不同于太空科技，這將會(huì)變成混淆現(xiàn)實(shí)的頭戴式耳機(jī)（個(gè)人感覺應(yīng)該是類似于3D眼鏡類似的虛擬現(xiàn)實(shí)交互的可穿戴設(shè)備類）、區(qū)塊鏈、加密貨幣及超強(qiáng)超大容量的計(jì)算能力之間的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)。

原英文《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人·商論》2021年12月刊