Facebook parent company Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a recent interview that the so-called metaverse does not refer to a specific place, and it is more reasonable to say that it is a point in time.

Some believe that the recently hyped metaverse is not necessarily a place, but a point in time. Zuckerberg seems to agree.

Computer scientist and podcast host Lex Friedman recently had a two-hour meeting with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Friedman asked Zuckerberg when people would have most meaningful experiences in the metaverse.

Friedman called that point in time the “singularity moment” in the metaverse. The statement stems from the theory of the singularity in the AI world, the moment when AI becomes smarter than humans.

Zuckerberg said: “A lot of people think that the metaverse is a description of a place, but in fact the definition of the metaverse is about time, at a point in time when the immersive digital world is basically the way we live and spend time.” “I think that’s a reasonable idea.”

He emphasized that many people are already living in the digital world, but have not yet fully entered virtual reality.

As for when, Zuckerberg said that many different use cases, such as gaming and social experiences, have different timings. But for most people, the metaverse becomes a reality when it becomes more important for getting work done and is more widely adopted.

Some experts have previously said that augmented reality society is a long-standing theory. That is to say, with the development of human society, there will be a point in time when the boundaries between the real world and the digital world will be more blurred than ever, and the metaverse, like the current Internet, will become a necessary condition for the functioning of society.

But while many technologists are enthusiastic about the concept, others are skeptical. “It’s not good for humans,” said Louis Rosenberg, a 30-year-old augmented reality veteran and CEO of Unanimous AI.

Rosenberg said in December, “Being in the metaverse is going to be a more important part of our lives than being in the outside world. If that were the case, there would be all kinds of terrible things.”

The concept of the metaverse goes back decades. But Zuckerberg’s announcement in October that it would be renaming the company to Meta, and that Facebook, Instagram and other businesses would all operate under the newly formed company, putting Meta in the spotlight.

Since then, the Metaverse has become a buzzword, and quite a few other companies in the US have followed suit.

However, some are skeptical of Meta’s vision of building virtual worlds. An executive at a fund that focuses on investing in the metaverse says Facebook isn’t the future people want to see.

“We want to make sure the industry grows, not get ‘touted’ from those who see the potential in the space,” Christian Cooper, co-founder of the fund, said in January.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have all expressed disapproval of the metaverse, saying it’s just a marketing ploy.