January 22, 2015

The Microsoft HoloLens Headset and the horrifying prospect of "immersive videoconferences with colleagues."

"At Windows 10 Event, Microsoft Jumps Into Augmented Reality With HoloLens Headset," the NYT enthuses but my blood ran cold when I got to the end of this paragraph:
The company has seemed adrift in recent years. But on Wednesday, it unveiled an unexpected new headset that allows interaction with holographic images, enabling people to play video games, build 3-D models and hold immersive videoconferences with colleagues.
Here's the upbeat presentation of life with holograms:



Maybe you get excited about playing video games and designing motorcycles, but I'm stuck on "immersive videoconferences with colleagues." Much as I loathe sitting through meetings and would love to be freed from the physical restraint of the closed room, I'm horrified by the prospect of strapping goggles on my head and getting locked into an immersive videoconference with a bunch of other people.

In the future, will jobs with meetings only go to people who have a bizarre capacity to look without flinching into other people's eyes? I'm assuming they're figuring out a way so that we won't be stuck looking at a person wearing goggles. But staring immersively at colleagues' faces — goggled or not — sounds like utter hell. I'm old and I can retire, and if I were young, I realize, I could pursue an occupation free of meetings. But it's not enough to drop out. I don't want the world run by the kind people who are able to put up with that inhuman style of interaction.

And while we're on the subject, you must read this New Yorker article "We Know How You Feel/Computers are learning to read emotion, and the business world can’t wait."
The software [Affdex] scans for a face; if there are multiple faces, it isolates each one. It then identifies the face’s main regions—mouth, nose, eyes, eyebrows—and it ascribes points to each, rendering the features in simple geometries. When I looked at myself in the live feed on her iPad, my face was covered in green dots. “We call them deformable and non-deformable points,” she said. “Your lip corners will move all over the place—you can smile, you can smirk—so these points are not very helpful in stabilizing the face. Whereas these points, like this at the tip of your nose, don’t go anywhere.” Serving as anchors, the non-deformable points help judge how far other points move.

Affdex also scans for the shifting texture of skin—the distribution of wrinkles around an eye, or the furrow of a brow—and combines that information with the deformable points to build detailed models of the face as it reacts. The algorithm identifies an emotional expression by comparing it with countless others that it has previously analyzed.
It seems obvious to me that if we ever do have to put up with meetings in Microsoft goggles, we'll also be seeing detailed computer-processed information about how we all feel about every little thing that is said or seen, including the data about how we all feel about every little thing that is said or seen. Ahead lies madness.

52 comments:

n.n said...

bizarre capacity to look without flinching into other people's eyes

It sounds like a job interview. And, generally, evidence of mutual comfort or respect.

Anonymous said...

In the future, all meeting participants will wear Guy Fawkes masks, so that computer AI can't read their facial expressions.

Original Mike said...

I have seen the future, and I don't like it.

Mark said...

Professor, you should finish this blog post with,

"Hey, you kids! Get off of my lawn!"

Tibore said...

Meh, I won't be happy until we don't need a headset to see holograms. Like they did in the Star Wars prequels where some of the Jedi masters "holoconferenced" from wherever they were at. And somehow remotely sat in chairs in the Jedi temple when they were light years away!

Nonapod said...

This is augmented reality we're talking about here. If you don't like the way the other meeting participants look you can always overlay the images of labrador retriever on them.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

It's Blade Runner technology, and know they'll know I am a robot.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

I see the future, and it's virtual prostitution.

Crunchy Frog said...

I'm assuming they're figuring out a way so that we won't be stuck looking at a person wearing goggles.

More likely, you'll be stuck looking at someone's Hello Kitty avatar.

Original Mike said...

I guess they had to find some way to make Windows 10 worse than Windows 8.

Bob Boyd said...

Blogging Heads 3D?

Ron said...

oh I don't know...maybe just a different kind of madness

campy said...

Will there be an option to digitally remove their clothes?

Curious George said...

Will Robert Wright be a sniveling douchebag in 3D. Yes. yes he will.

Known Unknown said...

Me? I'm going into the mask business.

lgv said...

Well, often these new technologies are projected to be used in ways that you might not like, but it is all marketing. It is quite probable that "immersive video conferences" won't actually happen with this gadget.

As for facial scanning, if it happens, I will invest in a poker school, where classes will be filled with people training to have a poker face.

PB said...

a WHOLE lot of bandwidth is going to be needed.

rhhardin said...

Don't worry.

Brain scans don't work on women.

FleetUSA said...

Professor,

I totally agree. For me the freedom of a day without phones, internet, and other disturbances -- thinking about how to solve the most pressing problems seems like nirvana.

All the other stuff is NOISE and interrupts THINKING.

rhhardin said...

Anne Hathaway has the best rendition of falling for the previously disliked guy (Get Smart, 2008, not at the end), getting the double yes right.

A yes and then a yes that signs that yes.

The other romantic comedies I've gone through don't get that right.

Will the face tracker know it should track that?

George M. Spencer said...

"Ahead lies madness."

?

Ahead lies obedience.

Beorn said...

I can just see it now...

Honey, how come you always wear your HoloLens™ whenever we have sex?!?

Next Adventure said...

I'm really surprised by the complaints in the post. After reading so many posts on the horribleness of air travel, I expected a little more support for the idea of meeting up in a virtual setting, and then walking over to your own kitchen for lunch.

Jane the Actuary said...

This means all the climate-change mucky-mucks won't have to fly to Fiji for their conferences, right?

They can just stay at home in their 68 degree (winter)/78 degree (summer) homes, right?

phantommut said...

Soon enough, your own personal Jarvis will be able to subtly adjust your on-line avatar to (a) filter out those emotional signals you don't want to show and (b) add in those that you do want to project.

At that point your professional persona really will be what you make it to be.

cold pizza said...

I wrote a short story several years ago that dealt with augmented reality. It's set in 2027 and deals with how people act/react when their interconnected and augmented world crashes after the power gets knocked out.

Look at how people act with their smart phones when the power goes out and multiply that to Nth.

I'm currently taking that short story from 2009 and expanding it into a novel. Google glass and hologram were not around when I started, but were a logical development towards High-Def contact lenses and eye-plants, audio implants (ear-plants), augmented advertising, and wearable major-domo servers that handle and sort the flood of information.

I project there will all sorts of privacy filters in place, and a complete lack of expectation of privacy.

And campy, there is no app to remove clothes (at least not "legally"), but Islamic countries have apps that will put virtual burkas on inappropriately clothed women. Ah, progress! -CP

ken in tx said...

The value of Looking into someones eyes is culturally determined. To most Americans, it it a sign of sincerity and honesty. In many other cultures, it is a sign of disrespectful challenge. That includes some subcultures in the US, i.e. "What chew lookin' at, punk!"

KLDAVIS said...

Google just killed Glass, mostly because it makes its user look terrible. On that, and many other counts, Microsoft HoloLens should be considered DOA.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said...I don't want the world run by the kind people who are able to put up with that inhuman style of interaction.

Is there any reason to think this technology must only be used for business? Oh, you want to Skype with your spouse who's serving in another country and use holographic tech to make it more realisitc and meaningful? Sorry, that's an inhuman sytle of interaction.

Original Mike said...

"This means all the climate-change mucky-mucks won't have to fly to Fiji for their conferences, right?"

You kidder, you.

Big Mike said...

In the world of the future you won't need special goggles as long as you have the right sort of web camera ensembles.

Compared to flying across the country in coach, changing planes in Chicago or Denver or SFO, attending a meeting while thoroughly jet-lagged, then flying home again, I much prefer videoconferencing.

The only question is whether you'll be you, or whether the meeting software will let you transform to an avatar. Maybe instead of an overweight 68-year old with a combover I can be my forty years-ago self, with thick curly hair and the physique of a guy who hit the gym three times a week.

(FWIW sometimes I think my wife looks at me and still sees that guy.)

Titus said...

Tom Brady doesn't want his balls rubbed....so hot.

Nor inflated or deflated.

He picks his balls and they are perfect...yum.

Tom Brady's balls.

lemondog said...

So how much $$$?

When available?

Can long-term use effect brain restructure?

Megaera said...

I think I can remember the same kind of misery-making about how horrid teleconferencing was going to make business, and how it was going to do away with business travel ... if memory serves that was at least, oh, 25, 30 years ago, and the tech has gotten exponentially better since then, but folks are still walking up the jetways to make those meetings. I don't expect this to be any different. But I may look into investing in a Botox supplier.

Freeman Hunt said...

Plastic surgery is going to be a lot cheaper when all you need is someone who knows Holoshop.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

It's a tenure-track professor's nightmare. Ivory towers are meant to be personal things, like the muezzin who gets his own minaret. More off-limits space within which to upload blog posts all day.

I get it, though. Some bosses are too intense to want to spend too much time around. Co-workers and collaborators, though? That should be a different story.

Anonymous said...

Finished William Gibson's The Peripheral a few days ago...the title refers to 3D printed bodies people in the near future can rent and remotely occupy the faculties of...for purposes of attending meetings, events, or cosplay. Seems more likely than this MS crap.

kzookitty said...

Back in November the docs told me I have about a year left before I get planted.

News like this helps reconcile me to that little factoid.

Kzookitty

JackOfClubs said...

No one is going to waste bandwidth showing 3D images of other people's faces. The only video conference application for this technology would be to show images of the content. Prototypes, demonstrations, multi-variable graphs, that sort of thing.

Bruce said...

"No one is going to waste bandwidth showing 3D images of other people's faces. The only video conference application for this technology would be to show images of the content. Prototypes, demonstrations, multi-variable graphs, that sort of thing."

This! I work in a job where we have several virtual meetings a day every day, as we have offices around the country (and in fact around the world) working on the same project.

100% of the time, the video conference contains presentation material or someone's computer screen doing a demo, or collaboratively working on a specific problem.

You learn in less than a day of remote conferencing that a video conference that show everyone else's conference rooms is next to useless. You don't need to see the people, you need to see what you are talking about / working on. And you need to be able to speak and hear one another. We never, ever, put the camera on the people involved, because why would you?

Danno said...

Ann, Yes, they will hold immersive videoconferences with colleagues, as a replacement for waterboarding.

richard mcenroe said...

Interesting...

Ann Althouse said...

"Ann, Yes, they will hold immersive videoconferences with colleagues, as a replacement for waterboarding."

Choose your immersion.

I'll take the water boarding.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

JackOfClubs said...
No one is going to waste bandwidth showing 3D images of other people's faces.


Is no one else going to say it? Ok, fine. "Pornography."

Danno said...

It was your sentence that began, "I'm horrified by the prospect of strapping goggles on my head and getting locked into an immersive videoconference...", that made me think this technology might be worse than the immersion that one experiences with waterboarding.

Alex said...

Well this is Microshaft, so you know it's gonna get a blue screen of death soon enough.

Anonymous said...

The botox crowd cannot move their faces. How will the computers deal with those already wearing masks?

Rusty said...

The future is now.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Me? I'm going into the mask business."

Almost certainly, rationalizations will be put forth (Privacy! Sexism! Ageism! Men judging Women! Aaaaaawk, micro aggressions!) that will excuse or even condone the wearing of masks in an all face-to-face communication world. Status, wealth, education and sports team allegiances will be conveyed by the quality, sophistication, and color of your mask. I wish I'd kept my Touché Turtle mask.

Oclarki said...

What about people with resting bitch face?

Crunchy Frog said...

Is no one else going to say it? Ok, fine. "Pornography."

Connected via Bluetooth to your favorite butterfly or fleshlight.

Jupiter said...

Ann Althouse said...
"Choose your immersion.

I'll take the water boarding."

I guess you know your colleagues better than we do.