As I look out the window and see a perfect scene that any piece of technology could never replace, I sit inside a structural building and watch a documentary of the great Frank Lloyd Wright architect.
But my eyes, led by my heart, yearn for the motion pictures that live beyond the glass that separates me from outside. I look out the window and see the south end of campus- Hendricks, then Flex- the track and soccer field, then the majestic sea. I see the reflection off the glass window of the documentary that was projected in the classroom. It was just as clear as when I looked at the actual projector. And then I thought maybe that’s where my thoughts immersed when I was a child, imagining holograms- from this experience. Or maybe those thoughts were instilled in me from futuristic movies that predicted of such technology.
It’s no longer a foretelling however – it is here. Microsoft will begin online shipping their new product, called HoloLens, for $3,000 on March 30. The world will never be the same way it is now.
The Microsoft HoloLens is a headset that creates a virtual reality in which individuals can interact with high- definition holograms. I am not ready to accept a virtual reality because I have yet to even grow comfortable with the rapid speed of technology that already exists- technology that already steals my friends’ attention- technology that already robs us of the simplicities of life.
People will say the HoloLens will be a great learning experience, or that it will be beneficial to our society – as long as we don’t abuse this technology. But we have abused all forms of technology.
Is it that necessary to check your “friends’” status on a daily basis? Does life require your coveting of peoples’ lives that makes your own existence feel worthless? Does life require your need to update a faceless audience about your forced adventures? What a wasted death Christ endured if that is what our life requires to move forward into the future.
I’m sure a new millennial will come across this, many years from now, and scorn at my contempt and refusal to conform. But if any future generations were to ever live before the invention of the HoloLens, they would only dream of the dangling remains of a tangible life.
Likewise, I admire the life that existed before mine – before the invention of cell phones and computers.
But I love my life the way it is now because I have control over the technology that surrounds me; I do not let technology control me- I control it.
And that is my advice to the future children that will grow up in a society in which the Microsoft HoloLens will take its permanent residence, along with other future technologies. I’m afraid of this drastic technological change because of its potential replacement of reality.
But I also have faith in God that he will raise a new generation that will cherish the simplicity of life – a new generation that will remember the way the sun shines differently on leaves throughout the day – a new generation that will remember the way ants minutely move along the side of the road – a new generation that will remember the way in which these simplicities of life connect us to creation and our creator.
To the future: remember.
Jayme O’Hanlon is a journalism and graphic design double major, as well as layout editor for The Point.
Grace Gaines