Forget Zoom, Hologram Meetings is the Future Says Zuckerberg

Hologram meetings will be possible in the future according to Mark Zuckerberg, a statement the head of Meta has recently made twice. First, to the American comedian Joe Rogan on his world-famous podcast in The Joe Rogan Experience.

Then he did so again in an interview on Stratechery, another podcast, with host Ben Thompson, a U.S. business and tech analyst. Zuckerberg evidently met with both to announce the plans for his new project at Meta, formerly known as Facebook, and the name change reflects his latest ambitions.

Zuckerberg rebranded the parent company of the social media platform Facebook in October 28th, 2021 and converted it to Meta in reference to ‘metaverse’ – a combination of social media with virtual and augmented reality. At that point, it began trading as ‘Meta Platforms’, of which ‘Meta’ was its short-form. What was previously ‘Facebook-first’ began to re-orient itself towards metaverse from that point on, phasing out Facebook’s integration with its other services.

The reason, as we now know today, was the realization of what Zuckerberg hopes will be the future of social media and virtual reality interaction.

Out with the old, in with the new: Meta vs. Apple

FaceTime is what techs describe as a proprietary videotelephony product available on iOS compatible devices. Invented by Apple in 2011, it provided an audio and video platform allowing users to see the other person on the end of the line. If Zuckerberg has his way however, Meta will go one step further.

Zuckerberg talked to Rogan for almost three hours. They discussed  simulation theory – the idea that existence is only a form of simulated reality – remote work and the future of virtual reality.

“Imagine if you didn’t have to move to some city that didn’t have your values in order to be able to get all the economic opportunities, that would be awesome,” Zuckerberg told Rogan.

“So in the future where you can use AR, VR, and teleport in the morning to the office and show up as a hologram. I think that’s going to be pretty sweet, right? It will unlock a lot of economic opportunity, for a lot of people,” he continued.

What Zuckerberg was suggesting is more than just seeing someone’s face on an Apple device, but actually being able to interact with them as a hologram. That’s even better than the recently launched AI Chatbot.

Sound like a real-world version of Matrix? Well, he might not be that far off given recent technological advances and science.

It’s all about human connection

During Zuckerberg’s second interview with Ben Thompson, the media tech enthusiastically outlined his vision of the future and in his words, it is “all about human contact”. Even their meeting on the podcast, he stated, would be conducted in ‘augmented reality’ using augmented reality glasses. They would even be able to do things such as handle 3-D rendered items. Furthermore, he enthused, “there is nothing that I think would stop us” from getting there just five years from now.”

How does it work. Easily it seems, at least to the Meta founder. Thompson, for example, could remain in his office in Taiwan and Zuckerberg in his in California. Nevertheless, they could still ‘virtually’ interact.

Now some might not quite understand how that is different from Apple’s videotelephony service.  Yet Zuckerberg is quick to point out that it is much more than an ordinary binary video call. Rather, it represents a kind of augmented reality that would enable users to interact with each other as well as with things.

To explain more precisely in his words.  “I can kind of have a 3-D model of the device and I can hand it to you. So it’s not just a video call, it’s like we can actually interact with things together, that’ll be compelling.”

The tech enthusiast then added the idem that virtual meetings were all about “human connection”. His desire? To create more interactive experiences in the metaverse world that would allow its users to actually connect. More to the point, in doing so, foster a more human form of contact and he recently looked at two Greek tech start-ups who could perhaps help him do just that.

Hologram Meetings the end of Zoom?

Virtual and augmented reality is something Zuckerberg has been promoting for quite a while. Indeed, he believes in it so much he completely re-branded and re-directed his entire company to that end.

This month, Zuckerberg’s company launched what he calls the ‘Quest Pro’, Meta’s first headset. The price is $1500, which for many may seem hefty. The piece however is worth the price, Meta’s CEO affirms, being  designed for “collaboration, creativity and getting things done.”

For further justification, he explained how the ability to converse with someone in virtual reality was “the ultimate expression of the type of services that we’ve been building for eighteen years now,”

The company would not be making a profit on it nonetheless. With the actual cost of creating the hardware, they would just be braking even, he asserted. Any profit would therefore be generated only by service and software purchases.

Zuckerberg is not the only one who believes 3-D virtual reality communication may be the new way forward. Scholars and psychologists, for example, have recently been diagnosing what they call ‘Zoom fatigue’, which they believe is one of the pandemics most widespread side effect.

It has become so common, in fact, that Stanford University Professor Jeremy Bailenson published a peer-reviewed paper on it in 2021. In it,  he offered several practical solutions, the most surprising of which was replacing flatscreens with 3-D representations. This, he believes, would remove most of the problematic.

When Bailenson spoke in 2021, the technology had not yet been developed. If Zuckerberg has anything to do with it however, Bailenson’s suggestion could become more than just a wish. It would be reality, even if only virtual or augmented.