Augmented reality prospects: Can Microsoft HoloLens herald the future?

Many people were shocked after watching the Microsoft HoloLens demo video, and felt that this technology really brought the scenes in science fiction movies into reality. But at this time, the more critical issue is not the coolness of the technology but whether it will become a widely used technology. If it will soon become a widely used technology, Microsoft is likely to return to the forefront and become the overlord again; if not, then maybe it is just a technology that looks cool. To answer this question, we need to review the development history of UI (User Interface).

A brief history of UI development

Today's computers (including PCs, smart phones, and PADs) are generally called von Neumann computers, and their basic structure can be divided into several parts: arithmetic unit, controller, memory, and input and output devices. This is a more standard statement, but it is difficult to understand. A more popular statement is that the CPU (arithmetic unit, control), memory, hard disk (memory), keyboard, mouse, etc. (input devices), display, printer, etc. (output devices) together make up a computer.

If we look at the development of computers from a business and user perspective rather than a technical perspective, we will be surprised to find that it is input and output devices, rather than several other seemingly more critical things (such as CPU), that lead the development of this industry.

Putting aside the prehistoric era of using paper tape to interact with computers, the development of UI has actually gone through three stages:

In the first stage, people mainly interacted with computers by typing text. At this time, users had to remember many common commands, such as the command to display the current directory, the command to sort the specified content, etc. This method is still the mainstream method on server operating systems today. Perhaps because of this, it has become a symbol of a master. In many movies, there will be a strange guy who hacks into various systems while typing on the keyboard. The main interactive tool in this stage is the keyboard.

The second stage is the graphical user interface (GUI) that we are very familiar with now. The key to Microsoft's rise was actually Windows 95, which was a product that featured a graphical user interface. Whenever people mention the graphical user interface, they always think of Microsoft and Apple more easily, but in fact the inventor of the graphical user interface was the Xerox Research Center, but unfortunately they did not industrialize it well. Jobs was the first to realize the value of GUI after seeing it, but Bill Gates was latecomer and got there first. Before 2007, Microsoft and Windows were the center of the technological wave, relying on the success of GUI. The main interactive tool at this stage was the mouse.

The third stage is the touch screen that we are more familiar with, and the landmark event should be the release of the iPhone in 2007. At this time, the main interaction tool became people's fingers.

In this development context, several points are very clear:

First, once there is a major change in human-computer interaction, it will become an opportunity for the overlord to re-rank.

Second, the basic direction of evolution is to make people more free, to make the way people obtain information return to nature, and to make the things people rely on simpler and simpler. In this regard, many people like to use the word usability, but it is not good, because usability is a product perspective, but in fact, the more critical point may be the human perspective.

The second point here is very critical, and it is a key criterion for us to judge whether HoloLens can become a ubiquitous technology.

Will HoloLens become a mainstream human-computer interaction method?

We can always use two perspectives to evaluate a new technology: one perspective is to focus on the technology itself and compare it with other technologies; the other perspective is to return to ourselves and ask ourselves what we really need. The latter perspective is actually a very critical philosophical question.

This article attempts to use a second perspective to look at the HoloLens technology.

As mentioned before, people always expect more freedom, which is beyond doubt. However, there are two very different ways to achieve the freedom people expect:

One path is like that of The Matrix. At this time, because the body becomes a bondage to the spirit, people abandon the body, and the human spirit is liberated through a huge virtual space. A purely digital spiritual world is established, and people are undoubtedly free at this time.

One path is superhuman, in which the human body and spirit develop in a coordinated manner, the five senses are fully utilized, technology strengthens human organs and serves the human soul, and people live more freely and truly in the world.

The first direction is not ideal. As a movie called "Agent Robot" reveals, no matter how beautiful the false beauty is, it is still a lie, and people will eventually find a way to return to reality. For this reason, technologies such as VR (virtual reality) are more likely to fail. It is useful for playing in a small range (games, design, etc.), but it is difficult to become a universal technology.

If HoloLens is just VR, I would rather judge it as a non-starter. But this time HoloLens is different. According to general classification, it is augmented reality technology, which is a technology that breaks through the limitations of time and space and allows digital content to be better integrated with reality. This is basically the second direction mentioned above. In the long run, this is a future-oriented technology with the potential to become a universal technology.

If the direction is correct, the next thing to consider is the progress. When and in what form will this thing deeply penetrate into our lives? This can also be judged according to the above logic.

People always expect to gain more liberation and freedom, so keyboards have advantages over mice, and touch screens have advantages over mice. Furthermore, if it is possible to wear a watch (or ring) to holographically project the interface to be operated, and to perform various operations directly on it or through voice, and to make calls, then compared with current mobile phones and PADs, the advantages in human-computer interaction will be very obvious, and it may be a replacement product. However, from various introductions, HoloLens is too far away from this goal, which means that although HoloLens has a bright future and may be the core of the next generation wave, it should not be the core of the next generation of human-computer interaction.

It is difficult for us to estimate the specific form of the next generation of products, but the portability of the next generation of products should be better than that of mobile phones and the operation of touch screens. People's demand for freedom will not be reversed because of the product. For the time being, HoloLens is not such a technology. The main applications may still be limited to games, CAD and other fields, and it will not become a technology that changes the existing market structure in a very short time.

It took 13 years from Windows 95 to the iPhone in 2007. If we assume that technology upgrades are linear, then there will probably not be any new disruptive human-computer interaction methods in the next five years. It is more likely that the CPU will become faster, the hard disk will become larger, the screen resolution will become higher, and so on, just like the PC did back then. In another five years, there may be disruptive new technologies that break this continuous improvement, but the possibility of it being HoloLens is extremely low.

Conclusion

I suspect that Microsoft knew that this would not become a widely popular technology in the short term, so it announced it in a high-profile manner. In the past, it was Steve Jobs who saw the GUI technology from the Xerox laboratory, and he shared his experience of this technology with Bill Gates, so there were so many stories later. So if this is a technology that will immediately subvert the market structure and recreate a $400 billion company, Microsoft should hide it like Apple did with the iPhone, instead of announcing it so loudly, which will only cultivate strong competitors for its future and does not conform to basic business logic. Of course, this is just a guess that cannot be verified.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.