The majority of tech critics have been doing adjectival cartwheels over the last week following Microsoft’s debut of Windows Holographic and HoloLens Augmented Reality headset.  Those who have tested the product have not just been giving HoloLens the thumbs up, but comparing the product to science fiction, a new world, or as Ars Technica put it after sampling HoloLens, ‘Flat-out magical’. Their technology editor Peter Bright opened his review by saying, “For the second time in as many months, I feel like I’ve taken a step into the world of science fiction—and for the second time in as many months, it’s Microsoft who put me there.” CNET called HoloLens “surreal”, while The Verge sounded more earthly (although they did point out that they “walked on Mars”) in calling it simply “true innovation”, and the most intriguing Microsoft creation in years.

Much less laudatory, but perhaps equally moving, was David Carr in the New York Times when writing not so much about HoloLens’ ultra-fantastic superimposing abilities, but more about how such a product could end up being a super-imposition concerning how we interact with each other. Carr invoked Charlie Brooker’s critically acclaimed Black Mirror TV series – a techno-paranoid anthology of future dystopian worlds in which gadgets not dissimilar to HoloLens (but more like Google Glass) create more of a mortal hangover than a merry future.

Carr writes, “The show came to mind when I watched a video demonstration of Microsoft’s HoloLens, because as screens have proliferated, the amount of actual, unencumbered reality we experience seems endangered.” He is quick to say he is not a “sad-eyed romantic for a pretechnological age” – which seems like a disclaimer one is obliged to add when questioning technological advances – and asks us if such technology that removes us, if ever so slightly from reality (this is augmented, not virtual reality) is a step in the wrong direction, a kind of monstrous entity we might foolishly invite into our lives that hits “us right where we live.”

Carr talks about virtual reality in reference to another piece of fiction (the film ‘Her’) that also reminds us that advances must always come with warning labels on the box, caveat emptors that comprise of our criticism and circumspection of every new technology that looks super-cool and entirely necessary. We must examine all that comes our way is his warning, citing Brooker’s words, “If technology is a drug — and it does feel like a drug — then what, precisely, are the side effects?”

Delivering the augmented reality

The man behind HoloLens, Alex Kipman, who’s been with Microsoft 15 years and was one of Time’s Top 25 Nerds of the Year in 2011, doesn’t sound like a man who’d want to steer us into a dystopian nightmare. In a 2011 interview with Fast Company when asked what inspires him, he answers the Burning Man festivals, which he says gives him “an opportunity to leave everything behind and go back to a primitive, analog and non-technologic state.” It’s reassuring, I think, that someone who may have helped create a flat-out magical augmented reality product finds solace and creativity in the real world. We might conclude that, when the man who creates things to distance us from reality finds his greatest pleasure away from his products, he is someone we should take seriously.

No one is exactly sure just how amazing HoloLens will be until the goggles are sitting on our heads and we are not being led through various doors by Microsoft personnel. The initial product might even be a bit of a disappointment after what we’ve heard from the few giddy testers out there. While it is still technology in its nascent form, such augmentation and shared realities might prove to be a great resource in terms of advances in education, the training of medics, police, etc. The question is just how cohabited should we be with games and estranged others? There are a lot of positives to be taken from such an invention, but to focus only on them would be imprudent.

What is profoundly fascinating is not where we are, but where we are undoubtedly going. A world in which more time is spent in non-real company, visiting places we will never really go to while perhaps besieged and harassed by insatiable advertising touts, or reliving others’ experiences instead of pushing ourselves out of the front door, is one which will likely lead to dependency, and in the end despondency. If the time comes when HoloLens is in every household, let us keep our eyes on ourselves and how we interact with the world, as well as inside a pair of goggles.

Photo credit: Andrej Villa via photopin cc