The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality by Blake J. HarrisMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The History of the Future tells the story behind the virtual reality (VR) company Oculus. The first three quarters of the book is largely about the people behind the building of the company, and the often harrowing process of getting it off the ground. The last part is much the opposite, about dissolution rather than building - specifically the exit of co-founder Palmer Luckey.
Starting up any company is a challenge, and focusing on virtual reality had extra hurdles since it had been tried before...and failed. From a present-day perspective, it's easy to forget that less than a decade ago, VR was considered to be either impossible or so expensive as to be useless to consumers. There is a ton of detail in this book about the difficulty that the Oculus founders faced in convincing anyone that they could actually make VR work, as well as some of the technical aspects that had caused that skepticism in the first place. In almost every case, the disbelief was overcome by getting someone to actually try their prototype, which from all accounts was good enough to make a believer of practically anyone who tried it.
Of course, simply having a good prototype isn't enough, so The History of the Future dedicates plenty of pages to the process of figuring out the logistics behind production of a product. Both in terms of the actual physical production process, and building a company that can make it happen. As with many start-ups, the question of how to pay for the whole process was a major struggle. Until Facebook came into the picture and bought Oculus, which more or less solved the money issues but brought along a whole different set of problems.
The last 25% or so of the book feels quite a bit different than what comes before, largely because it's about things coming apart. Luckey gets into trouble when he supports a pro-Trump political organization and it goes public in the media. Oculus and its founders are sued for infringement of intellectual property. Eventually, Luckey is let go from Oculus. This section is presented as Luckey being railroaded for his political beliefs, the company losing big money in court to a baseless lawsuit (though much of that was overturned on appeal), and Facebook using the situation as an excuse to get rid of Luckey and avoid paying him a large chunk of money due to him as an Oculus founder. It's hard to tell how accurate this depiction is, since it's basically just one side of the story. Whether it's the absolute truth or not, I have to say I wasn't particularly surprised. It's a cutthroat business world out there, and it doesn't take much of a misstep...real or overblown...to lead to a fall from grace.
Harris has gathered a ton of information from the individuals involved in this whole process. Not only about the facts of what happened and when, but the way those people were feeling at the time. I found the whole thing fascinating, because I'm interested in pretty much every aspect of the story: VR itself, the tech start-up culture, dealing with corporate acquisition, and the various interpersonal dynamics along the way. But it does make for a very long and detailed account that may be difficult to get through for someone who doesn't share all those interests. If you do, it's worth taking the time it takes to read through The History of the Future.
