Metaverse Future and Capital Supremacy
The metaverse is a popular topic of recent stock market speculation. At this stage of metaverse research and development, mainly virtual reality VR and augmented reality AR. As early as 1992, a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, a more systematic discourse as well as research direction was proposed. This innovative model reflects the imagination of American scientists based on scientific thinking.
The so-called VR is the technology to build a virtual world or simulation world, which covers almost all kinds of front-end technologies today: computer graphics technology, simulation technology, sensing technology and three-dimensional display technology, etc.. It allows people to enter a magical world through perspective, hearing and other perceptions, producing immersive experiences and feelings – and all these scenes, things, and even the interaction between the experiencer and the virtual things, are just virtual worlds or illusionary worlds made by technology.
As far as I know, Japan and the United States, a few years ago, there are a variety of “virtual scenes” of video design. Wearing special 3D glasses, you can watch the non-existent “reality”, the degree of realism, enough to fake, for people to open up an unimaginable visual realm. Only the interaction with the experiencer has not yet reached the level that allows people to enter the scene and interact with the things in it. It should be said that it shows a wide range of prospects in the military, education, research, design, and industry, but there is still a long way to go in terms of both hardware and software before it is practical, useful, convenient, and inexpensive. It is expected that a market scale will be formed in about twenty years.
The point to be made here is about its relationship with contemporary people and the controversies that arise from it. First of all, the question of whether contemporary people need and whether capital is entering in a big way, and this issue does not seem to need to discuss. Because people are such “monsters”, once they think of it, they will desperately pursue and achieve it. What’s more, there is the marriage of capital and technology, there is market demand, especially the demand of the entertainment market, which occupies a large share of the market, these will continue to push up the capital investment and researcher frenzy. So what is it that worries some people? I think it’s this virtual reality stuff that’s so addictive that it’s likely to be the first thing to take off in the mass consumer entertainment market. Just like inflatable dolls and simulated robots have brought people anxiety, the arrival of VR, so we can not help but stop to think deeply. As we all know, modern people under the high pressure of life, the reality of access is far from being satisfied – polarization in the world is increasingly outrageous and incurable; then, the lower and middle class, will go to the virtual world to find excitement and comfort. This kind of thing, which is enough to confuse reality and non-reality, will call people to indulge in it like opium, and they will be more and more alienated from reality in lying flat. With the opening of the third wave of the industrial revolution, human society began to move toward the era of pan-entertainment. Now, when the fourth industrial revolution is still emerging, human beings are facing increasingly serious existential dilemmas and social contradictions. On the one hand, people are calling for rational survival and the return of thought to rationality; on the other hand, digital survival is approaching, but people “can’t control” themselves, and it is difficult to refuse the temptation of digital survival. The rapid development of VR and AR will accelerate the spiritual metamorphosis – entertainment to death, or will it enhance human rationality? No one can predict, but the probability is the former.
Science fiction writer Liu Cixin, it seems, holds an opposing view. His mind, in the stars and the sea; in fact, he is also compelled by the divine mind of man; and the techno-freaks, will not pay attention to these people’s concerns. They are running hard toward the “divinity” of man. The essence of man’s divinity is to turn himself into a god, to be able to do anything his heart desires, just like the cigarette commercial: how far the mind goes, how far it can go. They are even fantasizing about man’s immortality – leaving the brain behind for all generations, even though the physical body will perish. The question I pose is, whose brain is left behind? Will it be the wise and the wise and the rich, or will it be left behind along with the poor and the brain-dead? I have predicted that if mankind solves the mystery of longevity (not to mention immortality), the kind of mutual strife, rivalry and killing that will follow will inevitably be more brutal and tragic than in the past for the acquisition of money, power and beauty.
Considering anything, whether it is politics, economy, technology (technology is also culture), it is inseparable from the basis of human nature, from taking into account and balancing both sides of human nature. For people with both good and evil sides, “punishing evil and promoting good” is the only measure and social code of conduct, that is, the original intent of the rule of law and the underlying logic of jurisprudence. Writing poetry and fiction may require the artistic stimulation of divine thinking, but in social practice, divinity is certainly an extremely harmful drug – the disasters brought about by social experiments throughout the 20th century are proof of the failure of utopianism.
The nature of capital, or precisely the nature of its owners, is to maximize profit. Therefore, the fears of all good people are superfluous – the world is already a world controlled by capital, you just worry about people, just shout, capital will not pay attention to you, its thieving eyes are fixed on those who intend to entertain the masses to death and send them psychotropic heroin. Is this the “capitalist supremacy” that all human beings should be wary of?
