The billionaire battle for the metaverse

Forget space. The race is on to take people beyond reality

YOU HAVE to hand it to Mark Zuckerberg. When the founder of Facebook announced in October that he was changing the name of the social-media network’s parent company to Meta Platforms in order to help create an alternative digital reality known as the metaverse, he was mercilessly mocked. To some, he was generating a smokescreen to distract attention from a political furore. To others, he was merely the latest middle-aged tech billionaire to chase a childhood fantasy, much as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk were doing with space rockets.

mercilessly/ˈmɜːsɪləsli/ adv. 残忍地；毫无慈悲地

smokescreen 烟幕（用以掩盖真相的言行）；障眼法；（战斗中用以掩蔽士兵、舰船等的）烟幕

furore n. /fjuˈrɔːri/ ~ (about/over sth) 群情激愤；骚动；轰动 • His novel about Jesus caused a furore among Christians. 他关于耶稣的小说激起了基督教徒的公愤。

And yet his timing was impeccable. Since October searches on Google for “metaverse” have soared. Wall Street is fanning the hype. According to Bernstein, a broker, the term cropped up 449 times in third-quarter earnings calls, up from 100 in the second quarter. It says markets with potential annual revenue of at least $2trn could be disrupted by the metaverse. Jefferies, a bank, says that though the phenomenon may be more than a decade away, it has the potential to disrupt “almost everything in human life”.

Impeccable /ɪmˈpekəbl/无错误的；无瑕疵的；完美的

fan the ˈflames (of sth) 煽风点火；煽动（情绪） •His writings fanned the flames of racism. 他的写作煽起了种族主义情绪。

hype /haɪp/ 名词（电视、广播等中言过其实的）促销广告，促销讨论•marketing/media hype 夸张的促销╱媒体广告

Hype动词： ~ sth (up) ( informal disapproving ) 夸张地宣传（某事物）•This week his much hyped new movie opens in London. 本周他那部被大肆炒作的新电影在伦敦上映。

crop up：突然出现，（尤指意外地）出现，发生 •I'll be late—something's cropped up at home. 我要晚一点来，家里突然出了点事。

earnings call：财报电话会议

Other tech giants like Microsoft have set out plans to head for the metaverse. But it is big firms still under the control of their founders that may become the most ardent evangelists. Mr Zuckerberg, with a net worth close to $125bn and almost total control of a company valued at $908bn, is the most prominent. Others include Jensen Huang of Nvidia, a maker of graphics processors worth $722bn, and Pony Ma of Tencent, the Chinese tech giant worth $550bn,whose gaming investment portfolio includes a 40% stake in Epic Games, owner of "Fortnite"one of the world's most popular games. Epic's founder, Tim Sweeney, is himself a force to be reckoned with. He recently told Bloomberg that the metaverse was a multitrillion-dollar opportunity, and that companies like his were in a race to get to a billion users in order to set the metaverse's standards for the future.

ardent adj. /ˈɑ:dnt/ 热烈的；激情的 • an ardent supporter of European unity 欧洲统一的热烈支持者

evangelist n. /ɪˈvændʒəlɪst/ 1.（基督教）布道者—see also televangelist；2. 福音作者，圣史（写作《圣经》中四部福音的人）

 to be reckoned with：认真考虑，不可忽视，对待

It is shaping up to become a billionaire battle similar to the Bezos-Musk space race. Instead of rocket science, it will be fought with reality-bending headsets, blockchains, cryptocurrencies and mind-frazzling amounts of computing power.

Cryptocurrency /ˈkrɪptəʊkʌrənsi/ ：加密货币

Forget space. The race is on to take people beyond reality

YOU HAVE to hand it to Mark Zuckerberg. When the founder of Facebook announced in October that he was changing the name of the social-media network’s parent company to Meta Platforms in order to help create an alternative digital reality known as the metaverse, he was mercilessly mocked. To some, he was generating a smokescreen to distract attention from a political furore. To others, he was merely the latest middle-aged tech billionaire to chase a childhood fantasy, much as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk were doing with space rockets.

你不得不服扎克伯格。当脸书创始人在10月宣布将社交媒体网络的母公司名字改成“元平台”以便于创造一个可以替代数字世界的“元宇宙”时，他被无情地嘲笑了。对某些人而言，这是他转移政治风波注意力放出的烟雾弹。对另外一些人而言，他不过是追逐童年梦想的中年科技富豪，如同亚马逊的贝索斯和特斯拉的马斯克一样，他们在造火箭。

And yet his timing was impeccable. Since October searches on Google for “metaverse” have soared. Wall Street is fanning the hype. According to Bernstein, a broker, the term cropped up 449 times in third-quarter earnings calls, up from 100 in the second quarter. It says markets with potential annual revenue of at least $2trn could be disrupted by the metaverse. Jefferies, a bank, says that though the phenomenon may be more than a decade away, it has the potential to disrupt “almost everything in human life”.

然而，他选的时间无懈可击。自10月以来，谷歌上“元宇宙”的搜索量激增。华尔街也在推波助澜。据券商伯恩斯坦所说，“元宇宙”在第三季度电话财报会议中突然出现了449次，而第二季度采100次。据说有至少2万亿的潜在市场年收益被元宇宙打乱。杰富瑞银行表示虽然元宇宙的出现要等至少十几年，但是它有颠覆“人类生活方方面面”的潜力。

Other tech giants like Microsoft have set out plans to head for the metaverse. But it is big firms still under the control of their founders that may become the most ardent evangelists. Mr Zuckerberg, with a net worth close to $125bn and almost total control of a company valued at $908bn, is the most prominent. Others include Jensen Huang of Nvidia, a maker of graphics processors worth $722bn, and Pony Ma of Tencent, the Chinese tech giant worth $55obn,whose gaming investment portfolio includes a 40% stake in Epic Games, owner of "Fortnite"one of the world's most popular games. Epic's founder, Tim Sweeney, is himself a force to be reckoned with. He recently told Bloomberg that the metaverse was a multitrillion-dollar opportunity, and that companies like his were in a race to get to a billion users in order to set the metaverse's standards for the future.

其他科技巨头如微软也制定计划进军“元宇宙”。但这些目前仍掌控在创始人手中的巨头公司有可能变成“元宇宙”的狂热布道者。有着资本净值约1250亿元和掌控着估值约9080亿美元公司的扎克伯格是其中的佼佼者。其他如市值7220亿元的Nvidia（辉达-全球最大图形处理器芯片厂商）的黄仁勋(Jensen Huang，美籍华人)，中国科技巨头、市值5500亿元的腾讯公司马化腾，腾讯的游戏投资组合包括Epic Games（全球最负盛名的游戏制作团队）40%的股份，Epic Games是全球最流行游戏之一“堡垒之夜”的开发者。Epic的创始人Tim Sweeney，也是一位需要认真对待的选手。他告诉彭博社，元宇宙有着接近几万亿美元的机会，像他公司一样的企业正在竞争获得十亿多用户以争取为未来的“元宇宙”制定标准。

It is shaping up to become a billionaire battle similar to the Bezos-Musk space race. Instead of rocket science, it will be fought with reality-bending headsets, blockchains, cryptocurrencies and mind-frazzling amounts of computing power.

这逐渐变成了如同贝索斯-马斯克太空竞赛一样的亿万富翁之战。不同于太空科技，这将会变成混淆现实的头戴式耳机（个人感觉应该是类似于3D眼镜类似的虚拟现实交互的可穿戴设备类）、区块链、加密货币及超强超大容量的计算能力之间的竞争。

原英文《经济学人·商论》2021年12月刊