Microsoft has learned from Google’s mistakes. The biggest lesson of Google Glass is that barriers to augmented reality aren’t technological. They’re social. That’s why Microsoft’s HoloLens will leapfrog Google Glass as the next great visual computing experience.

I’ve been listening to very smart pundits tell me augmented reality is coming for years. Purely from a usability perspective, it’s a great idea. Why should you have to hold something in your hand to interact with the Internet? And wouldn’t Internet information be more usable if it could be visually tagged to real-world objects?

Here’s the thing, though: when you’re not alone, you’re in a social context. Looking at your phone is a signal to the people around you that you’re not paying attention to what’s around you. Holding it up tells people around you that you’re taking a picture, so they can photobomb or scurry out of the way. Wearing earbuds is a public signal that “I can’t hear you.” Wearing augmented reality glasses, to everyone who isn’t wearing them, is a public signal that you are doing all of those things at once.

Glass’s key mistake was to make the augmented reality transition in the public arena. The word “glassholes” arose because of how Google Glass users appeared to act towards others who weren’t wearing Glass: taking pictures of them without their permission, ignoring real-world stimuli for invisible cues that other people in a crowd couldn’t perceive, or just being “rude,” as Google’s own, much-ignored Glass etiquette guide warned.

Disrupting a social context without considering the feelings of bystanders is typical Silicon Valley thinking, by the way, and it reminds me of the huge trouble Airbnb is having in New York City. The movement against Airbnb is coming, in large part, from the neighbors of people using their apartments as Airbnb rentals; the company didn’t think about how neighbors would feel when the common areas of their buildings were turned into hotel hallways, or how Airbnb’d apartments would become visual symbols of the idea of local residents being turfed out for tourists.

Sometimes it’s Best to Keep it at Home
From the more pleasantly social hills of Seattle comes another view. Look at Microsoft’s hologram demos: they all take place in homes or at workplaces. HoloLens is a way to expand and enhance your own activities in your own space, whether it’s turning your living room into a Minecraft game or collaborating with a group of people in a virtual conference call.

Microsoft seems to appreciate how hugely socially disruptive a technology head-mounted displays can be. The headset is unapologetically huge, and the lenses are shaded: anyone wearing HoloLens can be assumed to be in their own world. Microsoft is also focusing on experiences that take place in private, or in small-group situations where consent can be easily negotiated. Social change moves a little more slowly than technological change, and we may grow slowly accustomed to augmented reality experiences in the public space if we grow used to them in private first.

I suspect HoloLens will have relatively short battery life, too, which will help keep it at home. Glass was supposed to be worn all day. HoloLens will initially be picked up for specific applications like playing a game or fixing a sink, and then put down after an hour or two. That will make battery life less critical, but it will also make HoloLens less socially creepy.

If you’re looking forward to the socially creepy world where we’re augmented all the time, don’t worry, it’s still coming. Give it five years. We already have the networking technologies. HoloLens’s see-through display is part of the equation, as Google’s projection display was too hard on the eyes and too limited in functionality. But we’ll also have to see some sort of breakthrough in battery or charging technology, to make the lenses last much longer while not being physically huge. And then, only then, we’ll have to negotiate etiquette and social rules around these things.

That’s for 2020, though. For this year and next, let’s experiment with augmented reality. But let’s keep at at home.