双语精读 || 元宇宙的尽头

原文 ：The Association sells parcels of land to enterprising programmers wishing to develop them. Many do: their efforts are responsible for the houses, bars and skyscrapers that line the great road. At any given hour the road bustles with people, or at least, with their 3D avatars. Some are going to work, some are going on dates, many are just milling around in the way that people have done since the invention of streets. A few take their cars—like everything else in that world, really just bundles of computer code—out off the highway and “race [them] in the black desert of the electronic night”.

译文 ：计算机协会出售地块给有进取心和创新精神的程序员来开发，他们的努力造就了道路两旁的房屋、酒吧和摩天大楼。在任何特定的时间，道路上都挤满了“人”（或者至少是他们的 3D 虚拟化身。）有些人去上班，有些人在约会，许多人只是在闲逛，就像自从街道发明以来人们所做的那样。一些人把他们的汽车——就像那个世界的其他所有东西一样，实际上只是一堆代码——从高速公路上开走，“在电子之夜的黑色沙漠中赛车”。

解读 ：“avatar”指的就是现实中的人在元宇宙中的虚拟化身。电影《阿凡达》的英文名就是《Avatar》。“mill around”英文释义为“move around a place in different directions without any particular purpose”，中文可理解为“闲逛”。

原文 ：That is how Neal Stephenson, a science-fiction author, aptly described what he called the “metaverse”, in a tongue-in-cheek cyberpunk novel called “Snow Crash” (1992).

译文 ：这就是科幻作家尼尔·斯蒂芬森在一部赛博朋克讽刺小说《雪崩》（1992年）里恰如其分地描述的“元宇宙”。

解读 ：“tongue-in-cheek”英文释义为“not intended seriously; done or said as a joke”，中文可理解为“不认真的，半开玩笑的”。

原文 ：Three decades later, the metaverse—a sort of immersive sequel to today’s text-and-picture-based internet—has been anointed as Silicon Valley’s latest Next Big Thing. Microsoft is integrating virtual-reality offices and avatars into its “Teams” remote-collaboration software. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is so enamoured of the concept that on October 28th he renamed the firm “Meta” to signal its focus on this new “north star”.

译文 ：三十年后，元宇宙——今天建立在文字和图片基础上的互联网的一种身临其境的延续——被预言为硅谷下一颗明日之星。微软正在将VR办公室和虚拟化身整合到其远程协作软件Teams中；脸书创始人马克·扎克伯格对这一概念着迷到，10月28日他把脸书更名为“Meta”，以表示对这一新“北极星”的关注。

解读 ：虽然元宇宙的未来还很难说，但在这个风云变幻的时代，巨头们其实都非常紧张，因为他们害怕错过任何一个可能通往未来的节点，而很多曾经的巨无霸正是这样倒下的。

原文 ：It sounds like west-coast techno-utopianism. But some glimpse of the potential could be seen on November 8th, when Roblox, an online game with 200m monthly users, reported its quarterly results. The number of daily players rose 31% year-on-year, to 47.3m, propelling revenue to $509m. David Baszucki, Roblox’s co-founder and boss, said that the firm had predicted the rise of what is now called the metaverse when its first business plan was written 17 years ago. In 2020, when it was still privately held, Roblox was valued at $4bn. Today it is listed and worth $68bn, not least thanks to an over-60% bump in its shares in the past month.

译文 ：这听起来像是西海岸的技术乌托邦思想。但是11月8日，当拥有2亿月用户的在线游戏罗布乐思公布了其季度业绩时，我们可以瞥见（元宇宙的）无限潜力：日均玩家数量同比增长31%，达到4730万人，收入达到5.09亿美元。罗布乐思的联合创始人兼老板大卫·巴斯祖奇说，公司在17年前制定第一个商业计划时就预言了现在所谓“元宇宙”的崛起。2020年，当时罗布乐思还是私有的，它的估值为40亿美元；今天，已经上市了的罗布乐思价值680亿美元，尤其是因为过去一个月它的股价上涨超过60%。

解读 ：我们知道，资本对于利益的嗅觉是极其敏锐的——这是第一种情况，即哪里能赚钱资本就会涌向哪里。然而我们要知道，还有第二种情况，资本可以先对某个概念进行炒作，继而进行无情的收割。你们猜元宇宙是属于哪一种？

原文 ：For metaverse enthusiasts like Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist, online games such as Roblox—and “Minecraft”, “Fortnite”, “Animal Crossing” and “World of Warcraft”—serve as proof that immersive virtual worlds can be popular and profitable. According to Newzoo, a market-research firm, consumers spent $178bn on video games in 2020. Besides blasting each other, many gamers use them to keep in touch with distant friends. And they are already happy to spend cash on virtual property. Newzoo thinks around 75% of the industry’s revenue comes from games that allow the sale of virtual goods, for example powerups or clothes for players’ avatars.

译文 ：对于元宇宙爱好者马修·鲍尔这样的风险投资家来说，罗布乐思、我的世界、堡垒之夜、动物森林、魔兽世界这样的游戏证明了沉浸式虚拟世界可以在火的同时赚钱。根据市场调研公司Newzoo的数据，2020年消费者在电子游戏上花费了1790亿美元。除了狂轰乱炸，许多玩家喜欢在游戏里和远方的朋友保持联系。此外，能在虚拟财产上花钱他们就已经很开心了。Newzoo认为游戏业75%的收入都来自可以买卖虚拟商品的游戏，比如升级装备和人物皮肤。

解读 ：从目前的情况看，元宇宙最致命的问题在于，虚拟世界中的一切无法造就真正的生产力。不管怎么说，虚拟世界最终总是要与现实世界相联系的。如果前者无法在后者中体现真正的价值（注意是真正的价值），那么元宇宙必然只会是资本的赚钱工具而已。

原文 ：The video-game industry has been experimenting with virtual worlds for decades, says Raph Koster, a veteran designer, exploring how players use them to socialise, create and run entire economies based on virtual goods. Interest waxes and wanes as each generation’s ambitions bump up against technical limitations, he says. But now that the subject is in the air again, some metaverse enthusiasts reckon that the benefit of all that experience might let video-game firms like Roblox, Epic Games and Unity beat the tech titans to the punch.