Letter From the Editor: Microsoft’s Holographic Goggles Are Strange—But Kind of Awesome

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has an easygoing approach to management, and that’s changing the software giant’s corporate tone. Platon

Boy, do I love a shiny new gadget! That feeling, right? The unboxing, the admiration of the curves/chamfers/color/finish/glossy screen, the fumbling for the power button, the futzing and the tinkering, the showing-off to chums. It’s a rush. When it comes to the neato new devices that power the WIRED world, my affections know few bounds: rangefinder cameras, sleek smartphones, wireless headphones, robotic vacuums, 4K displays, fitness trackers, smart watches, wafer-thin laptops. I’m a guy who gets hot and bothered about well-designed gear.

If his office is any indication, Satya Nadella knows what I’m talking about. The first time I met the Microsoft CEO, late last fall, I recognized telltale signs: the stack of phones charging near his desk, the rat’s nest of cables peeking from behind the corner Xbox/TV setup, the near-constant chime of push notifications (on his iPhone, no less) paired with his fitness tracker—a Microsoft Band. Ding! Ding! Ding! But it wasn’t just the gadgets; it was the way he talked about Microsoft’s latest piece of hardware, Project HoloLens. “Just wait till you see it,” he said.

An hour later, Alex Kipman (who invented the Kinect for Xbox) helped me don a space-age-looking smoke-tinted visor a bit bigger than a pair of ski goggles. This was Project HoloLens. Kipman told me I was one of the first people who didn’t work for Microsoft to wear the device. It was a revelation. As my eyes resolved the images in front of me, I could still see the same room—except that now, in the middle distance between me and Kipman, a circular platform floated like a hologram from Admiral Ackbar’s war room. To my left I could now see an array of virtual tools—icons, skeuomorphic buttons, and toggles—that could be used to make stuff. Over the next 30 minutes, I designed and assembled a couple of crude holographic models, each ready to be 3-D-printed, using nothing more than gestures and voice commands. Mind. Blown. I’ll leave the details of this technology for Jessi Hempel’s cover story —suffice it to say it was a thrilling afternoon of discovery.

But as a gadget guy, I recognize that no matter how great Project HoloLens turns out to be, in a few years it’ll end up in someone’s trash receptacle. The only thing we covet more than the latest shiny new toy is the next shiny new toy. It’s one of the dark sides of consumer technology, this endless pursuit. And when we upgrade, the older stuff ends up bound for the local landfill. So I’m glad that sometimes Matt Malone gets there first. An Austin-based security expert, Malone figured out he could make good money rooting through dumpsters and reclaiming the valuable stuff we throw away. As Randall Sullivan writes in this issue, it’s not a perfect solution. But it’s one way to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots. “You can make a huge difference in people’s lives,” Malone says, “if you can sell them a computer that works well for $200.” It’s true: What we have and what we want are nowhere near as important as what we need.