Blake J. Harris on his book The History Of The Future about the virtual reality revolution (3/13/19)
Blake J. Harris’s 2019 book “The History Of The Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality” takes readers behind the scenes of Oculus, the upstart VR company founded in 2012 that—less than two years later—dazzled Mark Zuckerberg and was bought by Facebook for over $2 billion dollars. This incredible underdog story begins with Palmer Luckey, then just a 19-year-old dreamer, living alone in Long Beach, California. With the help of a slew of colorful characters—including those behind gaming sensations like Doom, Words with Friends, and Guitar Hero—Luckey’s startup company would deliver the dream of immersive and affordable VR to consumers, leading geeks and gamers to be excited in a way that they hadn’t been in years, and tech firms and investors scrambling to get in on the action before it was too late. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Blake J. Harris discusses the incredible story that inspired him to write “The History Of The Future.”