Lords of the metaverse 元宇宙領(lǐng)主

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

第一段：

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.

（元宇宙）不得不歸功于扎克伯格。當(dāng)Facebook的創(chuàng)始人在今年10月，為了幫助創(chuàng)建一個被稱為元宇宙的另類數(shù)字現(xiàn)實(shí)，將其社交媒體網(wǎng)絡(luò)的母公司更名為Meta Platforms的時候，他就被無情地嘲笑了。對一些人來說，他是在制造煙幕，以分散人們對政治公憤的注意力。在其他人看來，他不過是最新的一位追逐童年幻想的中年科技億萬富翁，就像亞馬遜的貝佐斯和特斯拉的馬斯克在太空火箭方面所做的那樣。

第二段：

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”.

不過，他的時機(jī)無可挑剔。自10月以來，在谷歌上“metaverse”的搜索量飆升。華爾街正在為這種炒作助威。據(jù)經(jīng)紀(jì)公司Bernstein稱，這個詞在第三季度的收益電話會議中出現(xiàn)了449次，高于第二季度的100次。報告稱，潛在年收入至少為2萬億美元的市場可能會被元宇宙擾亂。杰富瑞銀行表示，盡管這種現(xiàn)象可能還需要十多年的時間，但它有可能擾亂“人類生活中的幾乎所有事物”。

第三段：

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 Zucker berg, 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.

微軟等其他科技巨頭已經(jīng)制定了進(jìn)軍元宇宙的計劃。但那些仍在創(chuàng)始人控制下的大公司才有可能成為最熱切的鼓吹者。扎克伯格的凈資產(chǎn)接近1250億美元，幾乎完全控制著一家價值9080億美元的公司。其他(仍在創(chuàng)始人控制下的)公司則包括英偉達(dá)的黃仁勛和騰訊的馬化騰。英偉達(dá)是一家圖像處理器制造商，價值7220億美元。騰訊是一家市值5500億美元的中國科技巨頭，其游戲投資組合包括Epic Games 40%的股份，Epic Games公司擁有全球最受歡迎的游戲之一《堡壘之夜》。Epic的創(chuàng)始人Tim Sweeney本身就是一股不容小覷的力量。他最近對彭博社表示，元宇宙是一個價值數(shù)萬億美元的機(jī)會，像他這樣的公司正在爭奪10億用戶，以便為未來的元宇宙設(shè)定標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。

第四段：

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.

這將發(fā)展成為一場類似于貝佐斯-馬斯克太空競賽的億萬富翁之戰(zhàn)。和火箭科學(xué)不同，它將與“扭曲”現(xiàn)實(shí)的頭盔、區(qū)塊鏈、加密貨幣和令人眼花繚亂的計算能力進(jìn)行斗爭。

第五段：

Precisely what these plutocrats mean by the metaverse is as yet unclear. Will it be an all-consuming futuristic world of virtual reality, avatars, oceanside mansions and other online razzmatazz that will make the real world a dull place by comparison? Or will it simply be a richer, more immersive version of what already exists today: a way to socialise, work, shop and play online even as life in the everyday world carries on as normal? It is even less clear whether tomorrow’s internet users will be seduced by the dreams of entitled tech billionaires.

這些富豪們所說的元宇宙究竟是什么意思，目前還不清楚。它會不會是一個充滿虛擬現(xiàn)實(shí)、虛擬人物、海濱豪宅以及其他線上的狂歡活動的極其新潮的世界，讓現(xiàn)實(shí)中無聊的世界相形見絀? 或者，它只是一個更豐富、更具有浸入感的版本，就像今天已經(jīng)存在的那樣: 一種社交、工作、購物和在線娛樂的方式，即使日常生活照常繼續(xù)下去? 更不清楚的是，未來的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)用戶是否會被有權(quán)勢的科技億萬富翁的夢想所誘惑。

第六段：

A look at the ambitions of Meta, Nvidia, Epic and Tencent give a sense of the scope of the undertaking. Each has their niches. Mr Zuckerberg has earmarked $10bn this year mostly to develop the virtual- and augmented-reality headsets and glasses that he hopes will provide a dominant access point to the metaverse, much as apple’s iPhone does with the mobile internet. Nvidia is focused on what it calls the omniverse, a technology based on its chips that brings engineers, designers and other creative types together virtually to make things—mostly, for now, in industrial settings. Epic has been creating virtual worlds for years, including “Fortnite”. In the metaverse, its killer app may be Unreal Engine, a platform that gives its own and other developers the ability to make lifelike 3D experiences, including games, films, architectural models and industrial designs. T has XX to crack. Mr Ma is probably wise to play it carefully, given the XX’s techlash. But his firm’s popular WeChat super-app, including WeChat Pay, is already a 2D version of what the metaverse could become in 3D.

看看Meta、英偉達(dá)、Epic和騰訊的雄心壯志，你就會明白這項(xiàng)事業(yè)的規(guī)模。它們都有各自的適合的市場。扎克伯格今年已撥款100億美元，主要用于開發(fā)虛擬現(xiàn)實(shí)和增強(qiáng)現(xiàn)實(shí)頭盔和眼鏡，他希望這些產(chǎn)品將成為進(jìn)入元宇宙的主要入口，就像蘋果的iPhone對移動互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的所作的那樣。英偉達(dá)專注于其所謂的omniverse，這是一種基于其芯片的技術(shù)，它將工程師、設(shè)計師和其他有創(chuàng)造力的人虛擬地聚集在一起來創(chuàng)造產(chǎn)品，目前主要是在工業(yè)領(lǐng)域。Epic多年來一直在創(chuàng)造虛擬世界，包括《堡壘之夜》。在元宇宙里，它的殺手級應(yīng)用可能是虛幻引擎，這個平臺讓它自己和其他開發(fā)者能夠制作逼真的3D體驗(yàn)，包括游戲、電影、建筑模型和工業(yè)設(shè)計。T則要攻克C市場?？紤]到XX對技術(shù)抨擊，M謹(jǐn)慎行事或許是明智的。但他的公司廣受歡迎的微信app，包括微信支付，已經(jīng)是2D版本的元宇宙，可能會變成3D版本。

第七段：

Behind their futuristic ambitions lie some common experiences. First,?the mobile internet is reaching the end of an era.?In America and Europe, politicians are threatening tighter rules against monopolies and privacy abuses, especially with respect to Facebook and Google. In XX, the tech industry is reeling from the government onslaught. Not for nothing are some first-generation tech entrepreneurs in America and XX calling it quits. Those who remain standing need a compelling new story to tell.

在他們極其新潮的雄心壯志的背后，隱藏著一些共同的經(jīng)歷。首先，移動互聯(lián)網(wǎng)正在走向一個時代的終結(jié)。在美國和歐洲，政客們威脅要對壟斷和侵犯隱私的行為采取更嚴(yán)格的規(guī)定，尤其是Facebook和谷歌。在XX，科技行業(yè)正受到政府的猛烈的打擊。美國和XX的一些第一代科技企業(yè)家退出并不是沒有原因的。那些依然屹立不倒的人需要講述一個引人注目的新故事。

第八段：

Next, they operate in constrained worlds.?apple is a particular bugbear for Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Sweeney. The iPhone-maker is using the privacy settings in its iOS operating system to control the extent to which Facebook can sell digital adverts. Epic is engaged in an antitrust battle with apple over the fees its app Store imposes on game developers, which has so far been fairly unsuccessful. That is why both men vow so vehemently to promote interoperability—ie, no closed systems—as well as common standards. They, too, want to be architects of the operating systems of the future.

其次，他們在受約束的世界中運(yùn)作。對于扎克伯格和Sweeney來說，蘋果尤其令人頭疼。這家iphone制造商正在使用iOS操作系統(tǒng)中的隱私設(shè)置來控制Facebook銷售數(shù)字廣告的范圍。Epic目前正與蘋果就其app Store向游戲開發(fā)商收取的費(fèi)用展開反壟斷斗爭，但迄今為止這一斗爭并不成功。這就是為什么兩人都如此強(qiáng)烈地發(fā)誓要促進(jìn)互操作性(即，沒有封閉的系統(tǒng))以及共同的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。他們也想成為未來操作系統(tǒng)的架構(gòu)師。

第九段：

They won’t have the field to themselves. apple, though so far quiet about the metaverse, is no doubt preparing an offensive. Telecoms firms want a sniff, having invested heavily in ultra-fast, low-latency 5G spectrum. Rapidly growing platforms like Roblox, offering a build-your-own games model that attracts 200m users a month, have already captured young hearts. There are naysayers, too, notably proponents of more distributed technologies that are known as Web3, who argue that blockchains and cryptocurrencies are the next big thing—though as Ben Thompson, a tech pundit, points out, these may find much better use cases in the metaverse than in the real world.

他們不會專屬自己的領(lǐng)域。盡管到目前為止，蘋果公司對元宇宙保持沉默，但毫無疑問，它正在準(zhǔn)備發(fā)起進(jìn)攻。電信公司已經(jīng)在超快、低延遲的5G頻譜上投入巨資，他們也想賺一筆。像Roblox這樣的快速發(fā)展的平臺，提供了一個自己創(chuàng)建游戲的模式，每月吸引了2億用戶，已經(jīng)虜獲了年輕用戶的心。也有反對者, 尤其是被稱為Web3的更分布式的技術(shù)的支持者, 他們認(rèn)為區(qū)塊鏈和加密貨幣是下一個大事件，盡管技術(shù)專家Ben Thompson指出，這些東西可能在元宇宙中，能比在現(xiàn)實(shí)世界中找到更好的使用案例。

第十段：

There is a lot to play for. As Mr Thompson says: “Elon Musk wants to go to the Moon. Mark Zuckerberg wants to create entirely new moons in digital space.” But just as space is a race, so is the metaverse. Messrs Zuckerberg, Huang, Sweeney, Ma et al may promise a future for the internet that is more open, immersive and engaging than the mobile one that exists today. But each wants to get there first, so that they can set the rules to their advantage.?

還有很多事情要做。正如Thompson所說:“馬斯克想要登月。扎克伯格希望在數(shù)字空間創(chuàng)造全新的月亮?！?但就像太空是一場競賽一樣，元宇宙也是一場競賽。扎克伯格、黃仁勛、Sweeney、馬化騰等人可能會承諾，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的未來將比現(xiàn)在的移動互聯(lián)網(wǎng)更加開放、更具沉浸感以及更有吸引力。但每個人都想率先到達(dá)那里，這樣他們就可以制定對自己有利的規(guī)則。