2021年被称为“元宇宙元年”。3月，“元宇宙第一概念股”Roblox在纽交所上市，首日市值达到452亿美元；10月，扎克伯格宣布将Facebook改名为Meta，拟向元宇宙公司全面转型；11月，微软在Ignite大会上宣布了元宇宙发展规划，将MR（混合现实）融入了微软应用现有的Team功能之中。国内互联网公司也都将视线转向了“元宇宙”这个风口，从VR、XR、虚拟人等多个赛道进入了元宇宙行业：8月，字节跳动将VR设备厂商Pico收入麾下，10月，小冰公司推出了真假难辨的数字孪生虚拟人N小黑和N小白播报新闻，12月，百度发布了元宇宙产品“希壤”，并在其中举办了百度AI开发者大会......
In March, Roblox, “The first dollar of the universe,” was listed in New York, with a market value of $45.2 billion on the first day; in October, Zuckerberg announced the change of Facebook to Meta, with a view to a full transition to Woncosmos; in November, Microsoft announced, at the Ignité Congress, a plan for the development of the metaspace, integrating the MR (mixed reality) into the current Team function of Microsoft. In December, domestic Internet companies also turned their eyes to the “metrocos” and entered the metaspace industry from several races, such as VR, XR, Virtual People, etc.: August, the by-word jumps under Pico, the VR plant vendor, October, the mini-ice company launched the fabled digital virtuals N. Black and N. White, and in December, the 100-degree Congress of Developmenters of the 100-AI...
如今，作为行业风向标的Meta改名已满一周年，元宇宙世界究竟发生了什么呢？
Now, after the first anniversary of the change of the name of Meta as the industry's wind sign, what is happening in Woncosmos?
Meta的元宇宙战略成功了吗？
Did Meta's metaspace strategy work?
2021年10月28日，扎克伯格在2021年度的Facebook Connect大会上正式宣布将Facebook改名为Meta，承诺将元宇宙打造为可持续的社区与创作者经济、开发者生态，让元宇宙在未来10年覆盖10亿人。Facebook的改名吸引了全世界关注，Metaverse（元宇宙）一词在搜索引擎中的热度飙升，被公众热议。
On October 28, 2021, at the 2021 Facebook Connect Congress, Zuckerberg officially announced that Facebook would change its name to Meta, promising to transform the meta-cosmos into a sustainable community and creator economy and developer ecology that would cover 1 billion people in the next 10 years. The name of Facebook attracted worldwide attention, and the word Metaverse was so hot in the search engine that it was popularly debated.
回顾Meta在过去一年的表现，我们不难发现，扎克伯格的元宇宙战略确实带给了我们不少“出乎意料”的东西。今年8月，当Meta的元宇宙应用Horizon Worlds（地平线世界）落地欧洲市场时，扎克伯格便兴奋地在社交媒体上传了一张其与埃菲尔铁塔在元宇宙中的合影。但纵览整张照片，无论是人物的表情形象，还是背景的物体建模，都显得十分粗糙劣质。有媒体讽刺道：“为一张最丑自拍，扎克伯格竟花了160亿美元。”更有网友吐槽，这张自拍的画质甚至都无法达到2003年发布的《第二人生》游戏的古早画质。
Looking back at Meta’s performance over the past year, we find that Zuckerberg’s meta-cosmology has indeed given us a lot of “unfortunate” things. Last August, when Meta’s meta-cosm came to the European market with Horizon Worlds (the Horizon world), Zuckerberg was excited to post in social media a picture of him and the Eiffel Tower in the meta-cosm.
尽管如此，扎克伯格仍旧没有放弃他的元宇宙战略，他不断在社交媒体中向人们展示更进一步的元宇宙图景，以此证明战略的成功。在本月举办的2022年度Meta Connect大会上，扎克伯格更是首次展示了自己完整的虚拟形象。在实时画面中，其形象拥有了可以自由活动的双腿，并且不论他怎么上蹦下跳，画面的流畅程度依旧十分丝滑。更让人震惊的是，Meta宣称仅靠一个VR头戴式显示设备就搞定了扎克伯格全身动作的动捕，可以说是里程碑式的突破。然而，很快有人揭穿了这一假象，称Meta全身动作的动捕是依靠第三方技术实现的。Meta随即解释，明年年底，他们将实现这一功能，视频只是“用作说明和前瞻性演示”[1]。
Nevertheless, Zuckerberg has not given up on his meta-cosm strategy, and he continues to show it in social media as proof of its success. At the 2022 Meta Connect Congress this month, Zuckerberg showed his full virtual image for the first time. In real time, it has both legs that can move freely, and, no matter how he jumps up and down, the fluidity of the picture is still very smooth. Even more alarming, Meta claims that a VR-to-head displaying device alone is a landmark breakthrough.
虽然知道Meta急于向外界证明自己的能力，但目前的数据也说明了它确实难以消化“元宇宙”的概念。据《华尔街日报》最新数据显示，Meta的核心产品Horizon Worlds目前的月活用户不到20万，远低于预期。Meta设立的50万用户目标也下调至了28万。更关键的是，该应用的用户数一直呈下降趋势，大多数用户在使用第一个月后就不会再返回到虚拟世界[2]。
Although it is known that Meta is eager to prove its capabilities to the outside world, the current data also shows that it is indeed difficult to digest the concept of a metacosystem. According to the latest data from the Wall Street Journal, the core of Meta’s product, Horizon Worlds, currently less than 200,000 people live on a monthly basis, is far below expectations.
在元宇宙领域，一直被视为行业的风向标的Meta尚且不能够给用户交出一份满意的答卷，自己又深陷于股价下跌、管理层出走、裁员等一系列风波中。而其他元宇宙厂商的发展势头也都呈现出了疲软之态。虚拟现实的拥趸认为，一项新技术的大规模采用之前会经历繁荣与萧条的交替循环，“幻觉破灭期”仅仅是虚拟现实成为主流技术的暂时性挫折[3]。或许，当前的元宇宙可能迎来了扎克伯格所说的“幻觉破灭谷底期”。
In the meta-cosm, Meta, which has always been regarded as the industry’s wind signpost, has not yet been able to hand over a satisfactory response to users, and has been mired in a series of declines in stock prices, management departures, layoffs, and so on. The momentum of other meta-cosm producers has also been weak.
虽然在媒体报道和学术研究中，技术乐观主义的势头在当下越来越明显，但当技术尚未成熟而概念先行，产业要强行发展就会出现上述现象。此外，如今的元宇宙不仅无法达到我们预期的发展高度，反而隐藏着一系列的风险。
While the current momentum of technological optimism is becoming increasingly evident in media coverage and academic research, this happens when technology is not yet mature and conceptually advanced, and industries are forced to develop. Moreover, the meta-cosm today not only fails to reach our desired level of development, but hides a range of risks.
游戏优先导致“娱乐至死”
game gives priority to "recreation to death"
一些资本巨头在进军元宇宙时，为了谋求即时的高回报率，往往在建设中走偏了方向，与其说是在开发元宇宙，更像是在建设大型的在线游戏[4]，如Roblox游戏平台。截至2019年，其月活跃玩家就已超过1亿，其中有超过500万青少年开发者使用该平台开发3D，VR等数字游戏内容。
By 2019, some capital giants, in search of an immediate high rate of return, tended to be in the wrong direction in construction, more like building large online games [4], such as Roblox. By 2019, more than 100 million active players, including more than 5 million youth developers, had been using the platform to develop digital games such as 3D, VR, etc.
在元宇宙中，当人的主体性丧失后，媒介作为人类感知接触信息的工具，将全方位替代人类功能[5]，对媒介的高度依赖也将导致人们在虚拟世界中的感官放纵，人们有着陷入虚无主义的危险。今年，Roblox还推出表情捕捉，让用户的面部信息能更加真实地投射到虚拟空间，提高吸引力，但这也增加了上述风险。彭兰老师曾在讲座中提到，元宇宙提供给我们的沉浸式体验，就像赫胥黎《美丽新世界》一书中描述的“飘飘欲仙的、麻醉性的、能使人产生欢愉幻觉的‘索麻’（一种致幻药物）”。因此，媒介成瘾不仅不利于现实世界人类本身的自我成长，人们在虚拟世界中的行为也可能会在潜移默化中将人们的道德认知标准所瓦解，这对整个现实世界的安全和发展都是十分不利的。
This year, Roblox also introduced an appearance capture that allows users to project face information more genuinely into virtual space and to increase their attractiveness, but this also increases the risks. As Mr. Penlan mentioned in his lecture, the meta-cosm provides us with a immersional experience, as described in Huxley's book, The Beautiful New World, which is highly detrimental to the security and development of the world as a whole. Thus, media addiction is not only detrimental to the self-empowerment of the real world itself, but people's behaviour in the virtual world may also lead to the collapse of people's standards of moral awareness.
正如尼尔·波兹曼曾在《娱乐至死》中写道的，娱乐至死的可怕之处不在于娱乐本身，而在于人们日渐失去对社会事务的严肃思考和理智判断能力，在于被轻佻的文化环境培养成既无知又无畏的理性文盲而不自知[6]。对当前出现的游戏优先的风险势头，相关部门应该高度重视并积极进行干预把控，防止整个社会在未来陷入娱乐至死的状态。
As Neil Bozman wrote in Entertainment to the Dead, the horror of entertainment to death lies not in entertainment per se, but in the increasing loss of people’s ability to think seriously and reasonably about social affairs, and in the development of a culture that is lightly blighted to become both ignorant and fearlessly illiterate and ignorant. For the risk momentum of the game now emerging, the authorities should attach great importance and intervene actively to control it in order to prevent society as a whole from falling into a state of entertainment to death in the future.[6]
数字劳动背后的“双重剥削”
有学者认为，借助传播技术的力量，数字资本对传统劳动进行了时空分离与权力内嵌，实现了劳动的媒介化[7]，在元宇宙中，这一过程将更加隐蔽。从怯魅的视角对元宇宙进行探究可知，元宇宙所标榜的存在感不过是将现实虚拟后的存在感，人们的具身性感受是从可穿戴智能设备和虚拟眼镜中获得的[8]。基于上述特点，数字资本为提升劳动效率和资本获取剩余价值的能力，便在元宇宙中标榜起了将工作与休闲相结合。他们通过时间规训，建构了即时生产制、弹性工作制、时间商品化等多种数字劳动景观以迷惑劳动者，让劳动者在不知不觉中沦为“数字劳工”。扎克伯格在2021年度的Facebook connect大会上所宣传的元宇宙能为员工提供舒适怡人的虚拟界面，未来员工将“没有疲惫的通勤路程”“无论身处何处都能实现办公互动”的想法便很好地印证了这一点。这种即时的、跨区域办公的时代一旦到来，只会让劳动者陷入工作与休息的漩涡，其作为人的自由将会被数字资本的发展趋势和技术家长主义所裹胁[8]。
It has been argued by scholars that, with the power of dissemination technology, digital capital divides and embeds traditional labour in time and space, and that the process becomes more subtle in meta-cosmos. It is clear from a dazzling perspective that the digital landscape of the meta-cosm is merely a feeling of “digital labour” after the virtualization of reality. On the basis of the above characteristics, digital capital, the ability to enhance labour efficiency and the residual value of capital, marks a combination of work and leisure in the meta-cosm. They create a variety of digital work landscapes, such as instant production, flexible work, time commodityization, etc., in order to confuse workers, leaving them unwittingly as “digital labourers”.
此外，作为元宇宙的主体，人们的交往与情感需要也被建立在了元宇宙所创设的虚拟环境中，未来数字资本或将在某种程度上实现对人们内在情感的剥削。Horizon Worlds就是Meta一直致力于创设的“元宇宙＋社交”平台，但在该平台上，人们的情感和自发进行的交往都异化成为了一种价值工具，沦为资本增值的重要一环[9]。当情感被纳入数字剥削的范围，资本剥削的范围就涵盖了人的全部生活领域。
Moreover, as the subject of the meta-cosm, people's interaction and emotional needs have also been built into the virtual environment created by the meta-cosmos, where future digital capital may somehow lead to the exploitation of people's inner emotions. Horizon Worlds is the “Meta+social” platform that Meta has been working to create, but where people's emotions and spontaneous interactions have become a value tool and become an important link in the value added of capital. When emotions are included in digital exploitation, the scope of capital exploitation covers all areas of human life.[9]
可以说，在高度虚拟化的元宇宙中，人是被数字所表征的，个体将被纳入统一的价值体系中，而同一性正是对每个个体的否定[10]，这必然带来人们的劳动与情感的异化与虚化。
It can be said that in a highly virtual meta-cosm, the human being is represented by numbers, that individuals will be integrated into a unified value system and that homogeneity is the negation of each individual [10], which necessarily leads to the alienation and disillusionment of people's labour and emotions.
数据崇拜加剧“隐私困境”
Data Worship exacerbates “privacy distress”
未来，元宇宙将构建成为一个虚拟与现实深度交融、相互映射又可随时切换的3D空间，代表着一个深度数据化、智能化的时代，这也将当前衍生的技术伦理问题推向了更为复杂的层面。元宇宙的持续运行依靠的是强大的算力和精细的算法，数据正是算法运转的燃料，元宇宙中人类的数字足迹将被全面包围与监控，每个人的行为、生物特征信息都将暴露在算法中，这意味着个人隐私将在元宇宙中全面瓦解，人类将成为真正的“数字监狱的囚徒”[11]。故在元宇宙中，个人的隐私安全风险或将成为技术伦理问题的重灾区。
In the future, the metacosystem will be built into a virtual 3D space that interfaces with the depth of reality, maps with each other and can easily be changed, representing an era of deep digitalization and intelligence, which will also push the current derived technical ethics into a more complex dimension. The continuous operation of the metacocosystem is based on strong algorithms and fine algorithms, the data are the fuel of algorithmic operations, the digital footprints of the metacocosystem will be completely surrounded and monitored, and the behaviour of each person, biocharacterization information, will be exposed to algorithms, meaning that personal privacy will be completely disrupted in the metacosystem, and humans will become the real “prisoners of digital prisons” [11].
具体而言，身处移动互联网时代的我们尚且会有“隐私裸奔”之感，而在元宇宙中，我们则是真正的在“裸奔”。基于用户主体构建起的元宇宙会将数据边界进一步向用户身体内部推进，人机交互机制、扩展现实技术和脑机接口技术等的实现均需建立在用户的眼球运动、肌电信号、脑电波、基因构成等深度生物隐私数据上[12]，这对元宇宙中的用户数据隐私安全构成了更大的威胁。这种个人隐私的让渡也更具隐蔽性，元宇宙数字资源中的人物、组织结构、事件等实体及相互之间的关系会实现自动化管理，用户的生活记忆、思考习惯、情感倾向等数据都将被无条件获取[13]。当个人的隐私信息以看不见，摸不着的方式被僭越，次生的隐私危机也就不远了。
Specifically, in the mobile Internet age, we still have a sense of “principal nakedness”, and in the meta-cosm, we are really “naked”. The meta-cosm, built on the user's main body, will push the data boundary further inside the user's body, and the realization of human interaction mechanisms, the expansion of real-life technology and brain interface technology will need to be based on the user's deep biological privacy data such as eye movement, muscle telecommunications, brain waves, genetic composition, etc. [12], which poses a greater threat to the privacy security of users in the meta-cosm. This personal privacy is also much more hidden, the entities in the meta-cosm digital resources, organizational structures, events, etc., and their relationships will be automated, and the user's life memory, habits, emotional tendencies, etc. will be unconditionally accessed [13]. When personal privacy information is lost in an invisible and untouchable way, the next-generation privacy crisis will not be far away.
结语
杜骏飞老师将数字未来命名为“未托邦”(vucatopia)。这个词分为两半，一半是作为空想政治的乌托邦(utopia)，另一半是“乌卡时代”(VUCA)，指当前我们正处于一个波动(volatile)、不确定(uncertain)、复杂(complex)、模糊(ambiguous)的世界[14]。从元宇宙建设背后隐藏着的一系列风险可知，元宇宙的未来充满着许多不确定性。但不确定性也代表着无限可能性，如今的元宇宙正如十年前的互联网一般，机遇与挑战共存。无论当前元宇宙是否迎来了所谓的“幻觉破灭谷底期”，只要入局者始终保持理智和审慎的态度，脚踏实地建设人们愿景中的元宇宙，努力扭转概念走在技术之前，监管滞后于扩张的态势[15]，元宇宙的前景或许很快就能明朗起来。
The word Vucatopia is divided into two and a half, the utopia, which is an imaginary politics, and VUCA, which means that we are now in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity [14]. From the range of risks hidden behind the construction of the meta-cosmos, the future of the meta-cosm is fraught with uncertainty.
参考文献：
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审核：廖学琴
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