David Carr
THE MEDIA EQUATION
Microsoft made a big announcement last week, revealing that Windows, a lucrative legacy franchise, was about to be unleashed into the physical environment through a set of goggles called the HoloLens that superimposes the operating system on the actual world. In one sense, it was heartening. Business reporters are frequently hung up on the new and the insurgent, but seeing mature companies adapt to a changed world is equally interesting.
But something about Microsoft’s new technology creeps me out, and it probably has less to do with the threat of holograms populating our everyday lives and more to do with something I’ve been watching on a different screen.
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If Windows or something like it becomes the operating system not just for my desktop but for my world, how much will I actually have to venture out into it? I can have holographic conferences with my colleagues, virtually ski the KT-22 runs at Squaw Valley in California during my downtime and ask my virtual assistant to run my day, my house and my life. After all, I already talk to my phone and it talks back to me. We are BFFs, even though only one of us is actually human.
By most accounts, Microsoft has created a technology that blends the real and the virtual into a helpful hybrid by overlaying a screen on what we see. I just wonder if more screen time is what we really need.
Email: carr@nytimes.com;
Twitter: @carr2n
