holy lens

So Microsoft is edging closer to shipping Hololens and the press is gushing. Sort of. If you get beyond the headline, the story is that it still isn’t ready for primetime (narrow field of vision, clunky hardware, content not yet there) but as I’ve said many times, within 3-5 years a significant percentage of the population will be wearing some sort of AR glasses/headset/whatever.

That said, the part about moving from powerpoint to holograms is…well…just stupid. In the words of Edward Tufte, more “chart junk.” Yes, the new platforms present new modes of storytelling. But porting powerpoint into the 3rd or augmented dimension is just going to be like bad clip art…in the 3rd or augmented dimension. We have an opportunity to rethink how we create narrative. Let’s not use ppt as the starting point…