Unease for What Microsoft’s HoloLens Will Mean for Our Screen-Obsessed Lives

David Carr is one of my favorite columnists. A former tech luddite, he’s embraced tech, but not to the point where he’s obsessed with it, like so many others. He also has a healthy perspective on the downside of tech.

Here’s a great piece from other day talking about the consequences of tech – Unease for What Microsoft’s HoloLens Will Mean for Our Screen-Obsessed Lives. It has some great links that are so valuable, they each deserve their own post.

From the piece:
“What is it about our current reality that is so insufficient that we feel compelled to augment or improve it? I understand why people bury themselves in their phones on elevator rides, on subways and in the queue for coffee, but it has gotten to the point where even our distractions require distractions. No media viewing experience seems complete without a second screen, where we can yammer with our friends on social media or in instant messages about what we are watching”.

Carr goes on:
“And it’s not just those raised on screens who are prone to distraction. As adults, we make “friends” who are not actually friends, develop “followers” composed of people who would not follow us out of a room, and “like” things whether we really like them or not. We no longer even have to come up with a good line at a bar to meet someone. We already know he or she swiped right after seeing us on Tinder, so the social risk is low”.

and he wraps it up with this:
“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”.