每日口說挑戰【BBC 新聞】到底元宇宙是什麼？ (What is the metaverse? - BBC News)

[TRANSCRIPT]

Welcome to this week’s news report. I'm Leila.
CNN10 is on break for the quarter, so today we’re checking in with BBC News and their segment on the metaverse.

What is the metaverse?

VoiceTubers who have seen the 2009 James Cameron film “Avatar”, read the 2012 novel “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline, or seen its 2018 film adaptation will most likely be familiar with the concept behind Zuckerberg’s new metaverse. Today’s BBC News video explores the metaverse in more detail.

While the internet we have known up to this point could be described as linear or 2D, the idea behind the metaverse is to create a completely immersive virtual platform that works for desktop and mobile alike.

Instead of creating a profile of yourself with text, 2D photos, and perhaps video, users will be represented by avatars or virtual versions of themselves that will travel between online experiences and virtual environments such as a virtual home space, a stylist, a store, and so forth. Companies like Ready Player Me and OZ already exist to create an avatar for you based on a photo.

BBC News spoke with Andrew Bosworth from Meta who says what he’s most excited about is an economy existing within the metaverse for obvious things like digital goods and entertainment, but also the eventual inclusion of digital services.

Microsoft has already adapted its workplace meeting software, Teams, to integrate with the metaverse by building a new system called Mesh, which is designed to work with a number of different devices including virtual and augmented reality.

Devices for augmented reality, also known as AR, are those that project graphics on top of the real world, for example via headsets, glasses, or mobile phone displays.

Alex Kipman, Technical Fellow at Microsoft, claims that, unlike the fatigue that people may feel from video chats and meetings, this new immersive reality will change the screen fatigue that we feel today.

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, is also working on a sensor-loaded glove that will help users physically interact with their metaverse beyond just the visuals. The glove should be able to create sensations for the user by way of the air pockets across the glove’s surface, so that the user would be able to feel as though they were holding an object. However, these gloves are still in research and development.

And now, our Sentence of the Day:

There's quite a few people that have got fatigued by having to have video chats, meetings, and things of that nature, and that they realized they now crave human contact.
有相當多的人因為不得不進行視頻哈拉會議和這種性質的事情而感到疲勞，他們意識到他們現在渴望與人接觸。

Let’s look at some vocabulary from the sentence:

fatigued
KK /fəˋtigd/ IPA /fəˈtiːɡd/
tired
勞累的；疲倦的
i.e. If your muscles don’t have enough glycogen, you can become fatigued easily and may not have enough energy to be effective when working out.
如果你的肌肉沒有足夠的糖原，就會很容易感到疲勞，並且在鍛煉時可能沒有足夠的能量能夠發揮作用。

crave
KK /ɪnˋvɛstə͵get/ IPA /kreɪv/
to have a very strong feeling of wanting something
渴望，熱望；難以抑制的渴求
i.e. Good parents can love their children dearly and still desperately crave a break from them.
好父母可以深愛他們的孩子，但仍然渴望擁有喘息的空間。

realize
KK /ɪnˋkɝɪdʒ/ IPA /ˈriː.ə.laɪz/
to understand a situation, sometimes suddenly
明白；認識到；意識到
i.e. I realize that mobile messaging is more convenient, but I still prefer to make phone calls about important things.
我明白簡訊更方便，但有重要的事情時我仍然偏好打電話。

Today's BBC News video left me with some gray-area questions.

Will Facebook’s rebranding as Meta be enough to keep the company relevant?

Will the metaverse become a new standard for virtual interaction on the internet? Or will it, too, suffer the same fate as previous failed AR systems like Google Glass?

I’m Leila, and that’s the news for now.

Say goodbye to the real world as we know it. Young people will jump on this and it will expand and grow, making the future of humans living within themselves, cut off from reality and unable to interact with another live person.

●the vocabulary from the video and the script●
1. metaverse (n) 【電腦】指一網線上呈現的虛擬實境
: a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users

2. avatar [͵ævəˋtɑr] (n)【電腦】（術語）指在虛擬實境中互動地呈現一個人
: an incarnation, embodiment, or manifestation of a person or idea

3. spacial (a) 空間的；空間性的
>This task is designed to test children's spacial awareness.
這一個任務是爲測試孩子的空間概念而設計的。

4. prime time (n) 黃金時段
:the time period when the television or radio audience is the largest also
:the choicest or busiest time

5. inflat (v) 使充氣；使膨脹[（+with）]
>Jimin inflated the football.
Jimin給足球打了氣。
>Clothing has inflated in price.
服裝漲價了。

6. glycogen /ˈɡlaɪ.kəʊ.dʒən/ (n) 糖原（存在於動物的肝臟和肌肉中，儲藏碳水化合物，控制血糖水準）
>Since swimmers can burn about 1,000 calories per hour, Jimin’s diet tended to be relatively high in carbohydrates to avoid glycogen depletion.
由於游泳運動員每小時可以燃燒大約 1,000 卡路里的熱量，Jimin的飲食中碳水化合物含量相對較高，以避免糖原耗盡。

There's quite a few people that have got fatigued by having to have video chats, meetings, and things of that nature, and that they realized they now crave human contact.

There's quite a few people that have got fatigued by having to have video chats, meetings, and things of that nature, and that they realized they now crave human contact.

There's quite a few people that have got fatigued by having to have video chats, meetings, and things of that nature, and that they realized they now crave human contact.