I have seen the future… (for about 5 minutes).

Do you remember the time when you first saw a _______________?

Now, depending on how old you are, the answer in the blank may be anything from indoor plumbing, to colour television, to GPS, to ???

It was more than impressive.

You immediately thought of something you could do with it, or how it would immediately transform your life for the better.

It was one of those “WOW!” moments when you knew life as you knew it had changed.

I had one of those this week.

This is as good a time as any to state that I am a charter member of the skeptic’s club.

I am not the kid that ran screaming out of the change room and jumped headlong into the pool. I was the kid who tested the temperature of the water BEFORE I went and changed.

I don’t commit to anything at first blush, or just because someone is excitedly extolling its virtues. I won’t hop on a bandwagon just because a whole lot of people are excited. Most ‘bandwagons’ end up in abandoned heaps on the side of the road after a new bright and shiny bandwagon comes by.

I like to take my time to evaluate things, and I don’t tend to get too excited about all the promises made about a particular product or trend.

I look at who is getting excited about things.

I look at who is saying things are important.

Do they agree in their support?

Do they always agree? (This is not a good thing – If two people in a partnership agree on everything, then one of them is not needed).

Suffice it to say that a great number of significant players in the tech world including Microsoft, Cisco, Gartner Research and others are agreeing on one group of technologies that is as disruptive as the PC was to mainframe computing, or tablets were to PCs, or smart phones to tablets…

… and that is the confluence of the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, Machine Intelligence, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.

Think of your assistant on your smart phone. (Cortana, OK Google, or Siri) The more you use them, the more they know about you.

For example, my Android powered phone has ‘learned’ the window of time I regularly travel between my home and office, and automatically offers me the best route and warns me of traffic issues.

The same phone figures out if I’m in a particular business and offers me coupons or reviews.

… and it does so without me asking it, or programming it.

But the real magic is when this device (and in the near future practically everything I interact with can ‘inform’ my assistant) can ‘overlay’ things on top of the real world I’m looking at.

I’ve been reading about this for a while, but it became real to me when I was able to try out Microsoft’s new HoloLens.

The headset is a self-contained computer (no wires attached to a big computer) loaded up with sensors and cameras, and it projects onto a clear lens in your field of view. Unlike the Virtual Reality headsets which block out the real world, HoloLens interacts with the real world you see, and makes it part of the experience.

One of the demos was an extended crime scene investigation. ‘Clues’ would appear (e.g. a matchbook under the actual table across the room), or a virtual character would enter the room and appear to sit on a chair, or other flat surface. Other objects would appear on your desk in front of you. The real and the virtual were seamlessly combined.

During my turn with HoloLens, I watched dinosaurs cross the room where I was standing, and then took a virtual trip to Piazza Navona in Rome, where I had stood in person last May. This time, it looked the same, but when I looked down, a hole in the pavement appeared, and I was able to see where street level was over the last 2000 years.

I don’t get impressed by much these days…

… but when a new technology crosses the chasm between a dream and reality, I get pretty excited.

I’m pretty excited about HoloLens.

If you had more money than me, you could order one today. The googles and the developer kit are around $5,000 CAD. Not really bad for a first generation technology.

Expect to see an upsurge in Augmented Reality.

In my opinion, it is a game changer.

Buckle up. Disruption is coming.

More information on HoloLens here: https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us

Image: HoloLens - Microsoft Corp.

About the Author:

I'm convinced that IT leadership needs to dramatically change how IT is delivered rather than being relegated to a costly overhead department.

In addition to transforming IT in my role as CIO, I look for every opportunity to talk about this... writing, speaking and now blogging on BeBee (www.bebee.com/@kevin-pashuk) , LinkedIn, ITWorld Canada, or at TurningTechInvisible.com.

I also shoot things... with my camera. Check out my photostream at www.flickr.com/photos/kwpashuk