Internet Software Technologies Related to the "Metaverse"

In the internet investment circle of 2021, the "metaverse" can be called the "hottest kid," with related concept stocks heavily sought after by capital. Internet giants such as Baidu, Tencent, and ByteDance have joined the "metaverse" track one after another, and multiple industry chains including virtual reality, online games, cloud computing, ultra-high-definition video, and digital twins have benefited from it.

Many people can't help but ask: What exactly is the "metaverse"? Is it a technological concept or a trap for retail investors?

The concept of the "metaverse" is very broad. Simply put, it is the next stage of the internet, a virtual reality network world supported by technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), three-dimensional technology (3D), and artificial intelligence (AI). It is born out of the real world and interacts with the real world, capable of reaching a state where true and false are indistinguishable and virtual and real are mixed.

For science fiction fans, the "metaverse" is not a new concept, but an old "meme" that is nearly thirty years old. It was first created by American science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, which describes a network world parallel to the real world, where future humans interact with each other in the form of avatars in an immersive digital world. Later science fiction films such as The Matrix and Ready Player One also feature the "metaverse."

Of course, old concepts in science fiction may become new concepts in reality after technological progress. For the capital market, the "metaverse" becoming a hot new concept is not accidental, but determined by a series of factors.

From a social perspective: The COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 has moved many real scenes such as press conferences, concerts, and graduation ceremonies into the virtual world, accelerating the pace of human society's digital migration and also accelerating the arrival of the "metaverse" era.

From a technological perspective: The "metaverse" requires interactive technologies such as AR, VR, and brain-computer interfaces to enhance the immersion of the virtual world; it requires 5G and cloud computing technologies to support large-scale simultaneous online users; it requires blockchain and AI technologies to lower the threshold for content creation, increase user participation, and achieve a high degree of synchronization between the "metaverse" and real society...

Some of these "rigid demand" technologies are advancing rapidly, while others are only in their infancy. At present, the technological foundation for constructing a primary, primitive version of the "metaverse" is already in place, but it is still far from building an ideal "metaverse" that people can immerse themselves in.

But I believe that with the development of software development technology and the maturity of technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G, and cloud computing, the true realization of the metaverse will come quickly.