Mark Zuckerberg says humans will have hologram conversations soon

Meetings will soon be converted to holograms, according to Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

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Mark Zuckerberg inside of virtual reality

The Meta CEO recently appeared on a podcast interview with Stratechery's Ben Thompson, where he explained that meetings such as the podcast that they were currently conducting would eventually be done in augmented reality via augmented reality glasses, enabling new ways of online communication such as handing 3D-rendered objects to each other. Zuckerberg said that "there is nothing that I think would stop us" from getting there just five years from now.

The Meta CEO explained that hologram meetings would mean that Thompson, who is located in Taiwan, would appear as a hologram within Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, United States. The Facebook founder said that having a hologram meeting such as a podcast will mean it's much more than just a binary video call where two or more people can see each other and that augmented reality users will actually be able to interact with each other and things together.

"There's nothing that I think would stop us in five years from now from having this podcast and basically just having augmented reality glasses, and it's like if you're still in Taiwan, basically your hologram is here at Meta headquarters, and it just feels like we're there," said Zuckerberg.

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Zuckerberg has been pushing virtual and augmented reality for quite some time and even pivoted his entire company toward the goal of having as many people as possible inside a virtual environment for both leisure and business activities. However, the adoption has been more than lackluster, with many people making jokes about what Meta has created.

• Read more: Mark Zuckerberg will axe employees that don't meet Meta's new goals

Regardless of the current public perception, Meta will be releasing the Quest Pro in October priced at $1,500, a hefty price tag for a piece of hardware that is designed for "collaboration, creativity and getting things done." Additionally, Zuckerberg explains that being able to have a conversation with someone in virtual reality or augmented reality is the "ultimate expression" and is at the core of what his business has been building for the past eighteen years.

During the same podcast, Zuckerberg defended the decision to price the Meta Quest Pro at $1,500, saying that companies typically build hardware and attempt to make a profit off the initial sale, and Meta won't be doing that as it plans on only breaking even with hardware sales of Meta Quest Pro. Meta will make the large majority of its money from software purchases along with service purchases.

• Read more: Mark Zuckerberg defends $1,500 price tag for Meta's VR headset

In other news, NASA's Perseverance rover has experienced an unexpected problem while trying to gather a new sample on the surface of Mars.

• Read more: NASA's rover gets hit with curve ball while taking a sample from Mars