Playing Ping-Pong Using Oculus With Mark Zuckeberg, Jokowi Realizes Digital Advances Can't Be Stopped

President Joko Widodo (Photo: Twitter @jokowi)

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) shared a moment when he played ping pong with the CEO and founder of Meta, formerly Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. From then on, he realized digital progress couldn't.

The story of playing ping pong with Mark Zuckerberg was conveyed by Jokowi when he inaugurated the Digital Generation Acceleration Movement on Wednesday, December 15.

"I remember in 2016 when I met Mark Zuckerberg in America, I was invited to play ping pong," Jokowi said as quoted from the Presidential Secretariat's YouTube.

He said the ping pong game was done virtually using Oculus Rift's virtual reality (VR) technology. During the game, Mark told Jokowi that the world would change.

"He told me, President Jokowi, in 10-15 years it will appear like we are playing ping pong. Everyone will be able to buy virtual land, can build their own virtual business, and there will be virtual malls, virtual games, virtual offices," he wrote imitating Mark's statement.

At that time, Jokowi admitted that he could not imagine how the virtual world could happen. However, in the end, the former Governor of DKI Jakarta understood that digital progress was impossible to accept.

"At that time I couldn't imagine what it would be like, but now I can understand very well that we can't prevent this digital progress anymore and it has entered," he said.

Furthermore, Jokowi revealed that currently many companies in the world are trying to build digital giant technology. There are several examples it mentions such as Facebook turning into Meta, Epic Games, Roblox, and Microsoft.

While in the country, there are 2.319 start-ups that continue to grow every day. In addition, there is also one decacorn company, seven unicorns, and many soonicorns.

Seeing this condition, President Jokowi then asked all parties to be prepared to face technological advances. The goal is that Indonesia does not lag behind other nations.

Moreover, Indonesia has a very large digital market potential at this time. Where in 2019, the digital market potential reaches 40 billion US dollars.

Then in 2020, this figure will increase to 47 billion US dollars and increase to 70 billion US dollars in 2021 and is predicted to be 164 billion US dollars in 2025.

Not only that, but Jokowi also revealed that digital consumers also rose 10.2 percent. As of October 2021, there was an increase in e-money transactions of up to 55 percent.

So, Jokowi wants that potential to be put to good use. "I say that the market potential is huge. Don't take it for someone else later," he said.

"If we can't prepare this, it will be very difficult for us to catch up with other countries," concluded Jokowi.