Does this Microsoft device on the left (the Hololens) + this perfect barrel from Anthony Walsh at Skeleton Bay = the next perfect wave of the future? Stranger things have happened.
Kelly Slater is to the world’s surfing community what Steve Jobs was to Apple Inc. Thanks to the latest success of his most recent vision perfectly peeling across our computer monitors, he now has more titles to his name than Daenerys Targaryen. What can’t this man conceptualize and conquer? As we watched in disbelief as the perfect wave doodles from our Algebra folders transformed into the real world and once we accepted that it was not a hoax, surfers around the world began to welcome that our way of life has once again been revolutionized. Wave pools are certainly nothing new, except now it has undeniably evolved, mutating over the decades from awkward and embarrassing to precise and unblemished. Is it too soon to ask what’s next?
While Apple Inc. has been the darling of Wall Street and techies everywhere for the greater part of this new millennium, Microsoft has been stealthy rising in the ranks of descriptives beyond “safe, consistent, and boring” to “Holy shit, that’s incredible.” Ever since Microsoft rebooted and showed former CEO Steve Ballmer the door, a new visionary and CEO in Satya Nadella entered, filled, and bedazzled the executive officer’s shoes. Since then, the company is much more open and sharing with freethinking developers.
Cue the Microsoft Hololens, the first fully untethered, holographic computer. Like WSL Holdings newly acquired wave pool, the Hololens is a functioning, albeit emerging, technology. Thus far, NASA, Volvo, the United States Military, and even the PGA Tour began demoing the first generation device. The applications stretch as far as one’s imagination allows, and one day, who is going to deny that Microsoft, the maker of the Xbox, won’t merge the hologram device to wield the world’s most perfect holographic surfing universe?
Just imagine, uploading any of GoPro’s POV (point of view) rides of Skelton Bay. Or how about the sensation of dropping into a Mavericks’ beast from the comfort of your living room? Perhaps this future is closer and more accessible than waiting for the perfect wave pool to open in your neighborhood.
