The year 2021 is drawing to a close. Yesterday, Reuters made an inventory of the hot words of science and technology in 2021, covering 12 popular directions such as metauniverse, Web3, NFT and wafer factory. This year, CEO of science and technology company drew inspiration from the science fiction of 1990s and proposed the "Yuan universe". The supply chain restriction of semiconductor industry made the consumer electronics industry and the automobile industry turbulent. COVID-19 also gave birth to the development of real-time voice social platform. The concept of decentralization in the Internet industry and the concept of net zero emissions mentioned in the cop26 United Nations climate negotiations swept the world. In foreign countries, the popular jargon for virtual currency investors such as "Diamonds hands" and "apes" in reddit, an American online community platform, shocked Wall Street and penetrated into the mainstream market this year, as well as strange and unfamiliar letters such as NFT and Dao... These hot words have also attracted attention in the foreign technology industry. If you are confused about these hot words, you can refer to the following short hot word information. Metaverse Some technology CEOs are betting on metauniverse as a successor to the mobile Internet. Metauniverse usually refers to the shared virtual world that people can access through the Internet. In the virtual world, people can access the shared and immersive digital environment on the computer screen by wearing virtual reality or augmented reality headphones. The word was coined in the dystopian novel avalanche three years ago. In October, Facebook announced that it would change its name to meta to reflect its new focus on the meta universe. Second, from Microsoft to the online social platform match group, CEOs of technology companies are discussing what they will build in the metauniverse. ▲ Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook was renamed meta (picture source: the conversation) Web3 Web3 is used to describe the next potential stage of the Internet: decentralized applications running on the blockchain. All users can participate in building and using these applications without disclosing personal data. This model of user ownership of platforms and applications will be different from today's Internet, namely web2, in which several major technology giants such as Facebook and alphabet control these platforms. In the web2 era, technology giants control all the information on the Internet, and Web3 appears to solve this problem. ▲ the development process of the Internet Era (picture source: Yahoo News) Real time social audio Real time voice social communication means that users have real-time voice conversation on a platform. This year, technology companies are promoting the real-time audio dialogue tools. They are eager to release new products after the uproar. The US social media platform Clubhouse needs to be invited to download and use. During the COVID-19 blockade, users increased significantly. ▲ American social media platform clubhouse In June this year, Meta (Facebook's parent company) launched its own club style live audio room and officially entered the field of social audio. Almost at the same time, the American chat software discord also launched its own live audio products. Spotify, a music service platform, also launched its own real-time voice social platform greenroom. Slack, an American team collaboration software platform, and Lingying, a workplace social platform under Microsoft (LinkedIn) and reddit are also developing similar products. NFT (non homogeneous token) The full name of NFT is non fungible token. NFT is very popular this year. It is a digital asset existing on the blockchain, and the transaction records are kept on the networked computer. Various digital objects, including images, videos, music, text and even tweets, can be traded as NFT. Unlike most digital items that can be copied indefinitely, each NFT has a unique digital signature. ▲ on October 6, 2021, the artist group die Dixons visited the city NFT laboratory called "game over" in Berlin, Germany In March this year, a work of American artist Mike winkleman (nicknamed beeple) was sold at Christie's auction for nearly $70 million, which is also the first non physical auction of a large art auction house. Decentralization Although the Internet is built as a decentralized network, which means that no one owns it, most of today's network traffic is controlled by major search engines and social media companies, such as Google and meta, who can determine the rules of their own platform. Decentralization refers to the transfer of power and operation from central institutions such as companies or governments to users, which has become a key theme in the science and technology industry. This change may affect all aspects of functions from the organization of industry and market to platform content audit. For example, in August this year, twitter funded bluesky, an organization that aims to establish a common standard to change the way social media platforms work. Dao (distributed autonomous organization) Dao is the abbreviation of decentralized autonomous organization. It is an Internet community owned by its members and running on blockchain technology. Dao is controlled by shareholders and not affected by the central government. Second, Dao uses smart contracts, code snippets that establish community rules and automatically execute decisions. Moreover, the financial transaction records and procedural rules of distributed autonomous organizations are saved in the blockchain. At present, the exact legal status of distributed autonomous organizations is not clear. In November, the crowdfunding cryptocurrency Group Constitution Dao tried to buy a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution at Sotheby's auction, but failed. ▲ constitutiondao will participate in the auction by posting a blog post Stocks (misspelled "stocks") Stokes is a misspelling of "stocks", which is widely spread on the Internet. Because online stock traders gathered on the Wall Street betting and other forums of reddit, an American online social platform, pushed up the stock prices including Gamestop, an entertainment software retailer, and AMC, a cinema line operator, which led to the rapid popularity of Stokes to lament the crazy trend of these stocks. ▲ reddit logo and Wall Street betting logo The jargon of these traders has become more and more mainstream, such as describing aggressive and easy-going investors as "apes" or praising "Diamonds hands" who firmly hold positions in the event of large market fluctuations. Gamefi (game Finance) Gamefi is a broad term. It is the general name of NFT + defi + games, namely game finance, which presents decentralized finance in the form of games. Gamefi refers to the trend that game players earn cryptocurrency by playing video games. Players can earn money by winning battles in the popular strategy game axie infinity through mechanisms such as obtaining financial tokens. ▲ axie infinity game interface (picture source: the national) Altcoin Altcoin is the abbreviation of bitcoin alternative, which literally means "bitcoin substitute". "Shanzhai currency" refers to any type of cryptocurrency other than bitcoin. It refers to the blockchain currency after partially modifying the underlying technology of bitcoin blockchain based on bitcoin code. According to the data of coinmarketcap, a price tracking website, there are more than 15000 cryptocurrencies as of December 2021. Bitcoin accounts for more than 40% of the total market value of cryptocurrency, Ethereum accounts for more than 20%, and Shanzhai currency accounts for the remaining market share, about 40%. In December, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla would allow the use of dog coins to buy some goods. Fully autonomous driving beta FSD beta In October this year, Tesla released its upgraded fully automatic driving beta FSD to some users, which is a driving assistance system, such as automatic lane change and turning. ▲ Tesla logo Videos released by beta users show that Tesla cars equipped with the latest 10.3 software repeatedly issue collision warnings without direct danger. Other users said in social media posts that some vehicles will automatically brake for no reason. The name of the heavily censored software itself is controversial, and regulators and users say it distorts its functions because it is not fully autonomous and still needs the attention of drivers. Fabs (Fabs) Wafer factory is the abbreviation of semiconductor manufacturing plant, which has entered the mainstream vocabulary this year. The supply chain shortage of semiconductor industry has affected various industries such as consumer electronics, data center, automobile, household appliances and so on. Net zero At the cop26 United Nations climate negotiations held in Glasgow this year, it was mentioned that more and more governments and companies have pledged to reduce their carbon pollution from climate change to net zero. Net zero means that greenhouse gas emissions are close to zero. In fact, these committed governments and companies will not reduce carbon emissions, but rely on efforts to absorb carbon such as planting trees to balance carbon emissions. But critics say any emissions are unacceptable. Conclusion: Twelve hot words overview 2022 technology trend 2021 is coming to an end. The hottest concept of the meta universe this year, the supply chain restrictions in the cryptocurrency industry and the semiconductor industry are all of the most concern. Secondly, the development of the Internet industry Web3 0 is also closely related to us. The most concerned science and technology hot words also explain the development process of the Internet to a certain extent, which is also the development trend of the science and technology industry in 2022. However, the technology industry is changing rapidly. How long will these hot words last in 2022? (Xinhua News Agency)