Merging Reality and Virtuality with Microsoft HoloLens

Abstract

In this thesis, I will investigate the discursive framing of the HoloLens as a technology that is able to symbiotically merge reality and virtuality, and its relation with the HoloLens’ technological imaginary. I mean to answer the following research question using an adaptation of Fairclough’s ‘three- dimensional framework’ for doing critical discourse analysis: “How is the HoloLens discursively framed as a technology that is able to deliver a symbiotic mergence between reality and virtuality?” This thesis includes a threefold analysis. First, on the level of ‘text’ I will analyse how Microsoft discursively frames the HoloLens on their official HoloLens webpage as a technology that is able to symbiotically merge reality and virtuality. Second, on the level of ‘discursive practice’ I will analyse how technology review websites subsequently interpret Microsoft’s specific discursive framing of the HoloLens, and explain how both Microsoft and technology review websites together provide recourses that help to feed and frame the HoloLens’ technological imaginary. And third, on the level of ‘social practice’, I will analyse how in a dialectical sense, the HoloLens’ technological imaginary helps to constitute the discursive framing of the HoloLens, and how the HoloLens’ technological imaginary is in turn partially constituted by the discursive framing of the HoloLens.