The trend word that I want to talk about is the “Metaverse”. I know the term is familiar to people in the Internet industry, but for the general public, it’s still underground. However, there is no doubt that it is the mainstream of the future society. I think a lot of people heard about the concept of the metaverse through the news that Facebook changed its name to Meta. The concept of a metaverse is pretty straightforward, an artificial space parallel to the real world, which is an extension of media. The word metaverse was coined in Neal Stephenson’s fiction novel “Snow Crash”, where humans, as programmable avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional virtual space that uses the metaphor of the real world.
Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that lasted from the beginning of 2020 to today, social virtualization has accelerated in just two years, and the number of incidents that people use the Internet every day has increased dramatically. People are used to using the Internet to communicate at work and for some entertainment purposes. In my opinion, from the use of software such as Internet games and online conferences to online shopping and takeout orders, all the interactive behaviors that bring convenience to people’s lives through media will be unified into one space by the metaverse. The more people rely on the convenience of the Internet, the sooner the age of the metaverse will come.
Indeed, during this time of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a lot of talk about the metaverse on Douyin that I follow. Even many variety shows have begun to add AI robots. Maybe one day it will really make the metaverse mainstream as we imagined.
You provided a lot of detail about metaverse, I learned some of it just now after reading your discussion. Very well done!