If there’s one thing we know for sure about the metaverse, it’s that we don’t know anything for sure about the metaverse.
Not yet, anyhow.理论上, it will be an open, shared experience that’s at least vaguely akin to virtual reality, augmented reality, or some combination thereof—a digital environment that we feel like we’re living inside, rather than observing on a screen. But for all the relentless hype the metaverse is getting, it’s dependent on the entire industry settling on a bevy of complex technical standards that aren’t even works-in-progress at the moment. As华盛顿邮报Will Oremus写last December, “The metaverse doesn’t exist yet, and it probably won’t anytime soon.”
For now, discussions of life in the metaverse—from流行趋向tocompetitive sports—generally turn out to involve existing proprietary virtual worlds such as罗布乐思,Minecraft, and the venerable proto-metaverseSecond Life. Or, in some cases, they’re unabashedly speculative, such as Anna Wiener’s recentNew Yorkerlook atmoney in the metaverse. Still, that isn’t stopping metaverse boosters from telling us what it’s going to be like—most notably Mark Zuckerberg, the guy whose enthusiasm for the concept led him to在此之后重命名他的整个公司.
要找到一个可比的技术人员时代，将一个想法视为现实，您需要回到1990年代早期。那时，他们痴迷的流行语是“信息高速公路”，即国家高速计算网络，它将彻底改变消费者购物方式，保持自己的知情和娱乐性，以及更多。And on November 14, 1994, at the COMDEX trade show, Microsoft’s Bill Gates dedicated his keynote to “this next era that we’re moving into,” with an on-stage presentation interspersed with chunks of a high-tech crime drama set in the futuristic year of 2005. (Side note: I attended COMDEX that year but didn’t bother to attend Gates’ talk, which I caught up with only when it showed up on YouTube in this century.)
去年10月，在Facebook的Connect会议上，扎克伯格介绍了该公司的新关注，将其作为Meta的Metaverse和Rebranding。他用视频剪辑说明了他的演讲，描绘了元视频将解锁的令人眼花tairgage乱的经历（例如被运送到世界各地的一场音乐会上） - 盖茨（Gates）27年前对信息超级公路（Information Superhighway）进行了处理。
Zuckerberg’s keynote and accompanying videos certainly spell out his vision in ambitious detail. But viewed in the fullness of time, the Gates presentation tells us more about the relationship between technological futurism and what’s likely to transpire in subsequent years.
In Gates’ 1994 COMDEX mini-movie, the technology of 2005 is the star. Everybody uses pocketable wireless devices, which, among other things, can be used to pay for items such as coffee. A couple of plainclothes cops have an SUV equipped with a giant screen that displays maps and video calls; one uses a tablet computer that can transcribe interviews on the fly. A woman watching TV pulls up David Letterman and Oprah on demand, not when their shows happen to be broadcast. Her teenage son researches pre-Columbian art using a graphical browser and then gives a multimedia presentation on the subject at school. After he’s struck by a car while evading bad guys—apologies for the spoiler—a remote doctor uses a video call to diagnose his injuries while he’s still in an ambulance.
1994年，所有这些都是Gee-Whiz的东西，即使电影中描绘的平面显示器也会像明天一样瞥见。但是，正如我经历了盖茨今天想象中的2005年，我不得不继续提醒自己，它应该充满奇迹。它看起来像智能手机，Google Maps，Zoom，Apple Pay，iPad和Surface，Otter，Hulu，Telehealth以及其他日常生活的工具。
Bill Gates, 1994I’m going to go this full hour without mentioning a single Microsoft product—if I can control myself, that is.”
Gates stressed that he wasn’t saying that Microsoft would make everything he showed possible—”I’m going to go this full hour without mentioning a single Microsoft product—if I can control myself, that is,” he joked. But in subsequent years, the company created an array of products and platforms that were very much like those he’d shown to COMDEX attendees: Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs, Auto PCs, and more. None of them were enduring hits; Apple, Google, Zoom, and other companies did a much better job of turning 1994’s science fiction into successful businesses.
基本上，如果您早在1994年在盖茨的拉斯维加斯观众中，就把他的视野视为纯粹的幻想将是一个坏主意：他得到了许多广泛的笔触。但这会还have been a mistake to confuse his confident air for the ability to predict the future. Many things happened differently than depicted in his movie, and many of them occurred well after its 2005 setting. And by the time they did, we lived in a much less Microsoft-centric world than we had in 1994.
Bearing all that in mind might help you gauge how to think about Zuckerberg’s metaverse pronouncements, whether you’re anoptimist或者pessimist关于该技术的潜力 - 或像我一样，仍在下定决心。如果他的预言甚至是模糊地掌握在目标上，那将是一个很大的成就。但是他的演讲的确定性并不能保证梅塔将成为主要参与者。似乎同样有可能由尚未成立的公司定义和主导。（对扎克伯格来说，公平地说，他确实说：“现实是，没有人确切知道哪种型号会起作用并使这种可持续性，因此我们将以谦卑和开放的态度对待这一点。”）
盖茨（Gates）主题演讲的最后一堂课是：当它所设想的世界变得真实（更少）时，他们仍然对“信息超高速公路”或盖茨所说的“信息高速公路”所宣布。只是互联网。
这就是为什么我不会太认真对待“ Metaverse”作为其描述的概念的名称。流行语很便宜；它的建筑很难。一旦Metaverse终于临到我们，谁知道我们会称之为什么，或者我们根本需要一个新名称？