For every employee that is upset about this there is probably another one that is proud about it and 5 that really don't care.
It reminds me of Black Mirror episode where using Augmented Reality, the face of enemies is morphed into the face of monsters so the soldiers would not hesitate to kill the enemies. May we live in interesting times!
I used a hololens recently and I was super excited but was disappointed in the end. The technology is definitely cool but the limited field of vision really kills it. The built in hand gestures detection is nice though.
This seems to be a typical case of someone in charge of a budget having to spend it otherwise it will be allocated elsewhere.
Either they have access to a completely improved device or expect a lot of devices being chucked out by aggravated servicemen. The current gen HoloLens is not much more than a toy.
This is almost humorous in a sad kind of way. If Google is not able to fulfill contracts for the Defense Department, then the government will simply go to the next source. I think Amazon, with its new HQ2 a mile from the Pentagon, and less problems of employees walking out, is going to dominate in this area.
Props to Microsoft biz dev for finding someone to buy those things, but wow - that is a lot of money to spend on HMDs that will never get anywhere near actual combat. At least I hope they don’t, for the safety of our troops. Can you even imagine wearing one of those monstrosities in a hostile environment requiring agility and situational awareness?
Not that I agree with, or support war in any way, and it always makes me a little sick to my stomach to see brilliant people coming up with technology to make killing people simpler - but...
HoloLens has sure better improve by orders of magnitude before I'd ever want to see it used in any sort of field.
It's like looking into a postage stamp of reality.
if this leads us to mitigating future wars to just a virtual battlefield .. im all for it.
let them get their testosterone kicks while the rest of us evolve peacefully.
Where is the outrage from Microsoft employees? Take a stand like your Google counterparts have! You can make money and not have to sell away your soul at the same time. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Take self-driving vehicles. Every single piece of technology used in its development could be used with some minor tweaking in a military application to massively increase the lethality of existing weapons and allow for an unprecedented level of increased killing and destruction. But instead of selling themselves out to a future that will be remarkably more dystopian if given in to military application, Google has chosen to make commercial self-driving vehicles which not only will likely save an innumerable amount of lives by preventing fatal driving accidents, but also will be making boatloads of money at the same time!
Technology is a force multiplier for better or worse, and it’s up to us as the future engineers and scientists who will be creating this technology to choose the right path. For those sociopathic leaning people who could care less about avoiding a future of death on an unprecedented massive and automated scale, luckily that path will be no less lucrative.
> "Many Microsoft employees don't believe that what we build should be used for waging war"
Someone is lacking in perspective. The modern US military cannot operate without Windows, SharePoint, Exchange, Internet Explorer, Office, and most importantly, PowerPoint. It's both frustrating and sad.