nick_latanick's review against another edition
4.0
Dryer than Blake's previous book, lots of business details that aren't very interesting from a story telling perspective. Most of the book end up feeling like exposition for the last few chapters, which I guess makes sense since Palmer's story isn't over.
rick2's review against another edition
3.0
But conflicted about this one. On one hand, it’s a compelling and entertaining narrative about the rise of Palmer Luckey and Oculus. VR is an interesting industry and I’m glad to have learned a bit more about the sweep of history over the last decade. The book chronicles the rise and fall of Palmer in a compelling and dramatic way.
I thought the first third of the book was amazing, the middle third relating to the buyout by Facebook was ok, and the last third was thinly veiled reputation management.
The author describes the tech well and the initial days of Oculus make for a compelling “us against the world” story. It was well done and there was an impressive level of access.
But that level of access leads me to my concerns. This reads like a very flattering depiction of a series of events that may not warrant it. My impression is that the author had very close access to the main characters of this book, and did what any normal person would do, he liked and accepted their worldview. However, taking a slight step back from this book, I think that the result is a book that needs to be read critically. For example, The book closes by describing the lawsuit between ZeniMax and Oculus. ZeniMax claims damages, breaking an NDA, and theft of IP. The portrayal of this is as if Oculus were victims in the whole affair, and “look how ridiculous the trial and result were.” Now if the only source of truth is this book, it does seem absurd to award hundreds of millions of dollars to ZeniMax. Then why did they do it? For all the flaws in our court system, it seems to me that the most likely answer is that Oculus and co broke their NDA and infringed on copyright laws.
And so. How do you trust a book that seems to be focused on portraying the main subject sympathetically rather then accurately? Another example, no doubt the PR fiasco due to Luckey’s involvement in a right wing PAC was unfortunate, but I felt like I was reading a multi chapter justification of what happened. Where was this author when I was explaining to my parents in high school why I had a bong in my backpack?
I thought the first third of the book was amazing, the middle third relating to the buyout by Facebook was ok, and the last third was thinly veiled reputation management.
The author describes the tech well and the initial days of Oculus make for a compelling “us against the world” story. It was well done and there was an impressive level of access.
But that level of access leads me to my concerns. This reads like a very flattering depiction of a series of events that may not warrant it. My impression is that the author had very close access to the main characters of this book, and did what any normal person would do, he liked and accepted their worldview. However, taking a slight step back from this book, I think that the result is a book that needs to be read critically. For example, The book closes by describing the lawsuit between ZeniMax and Oculus. ZeniMax claims damages, breaking an NDA, and theft of IP. The portrayal of this is as if Oculus were victims in the whole affair, and “look how ridiculous the trial and result were.” Now if the only source of truth is this book, it does seem absurd to award hundreds of millions of dollars to ZeniMax. Then why did they do it? For all the flaws in our court system, it seems to me that the most likely answer is that Oculus and co broke their NDA and infringed on copyright laws.
And so. How do you trust a book that seems to be focused on portraying the main subject sympathetically rather then accurately? Another example, no doubt the PR fiasco due to Luckey’s involvement in a right wing PAC was unfortunate, but I felt like I was reading a multi chapter justification of what happened. Where was this author when I was explaining to my parents in high school why I had a bong in my backpack?
mkesten's review against another edition
2.0
“The History of the Future” is either the worst name for this book, or perhaps a tongue-in-cheek reference to one character’s reference to the impact virtual reality is expected to have on the gaming industry over the next few decades.
This book is not a history of the future.
For a few bright, shining years a very young man, Palmer Lucky, headed his own tech start-up in the promising field of virtual reality gaming. Virtual reality is really a synthetic, immersive gaming environment in 3D. Lucky and his colleagues sold the company, Oculus, for billions to facebook.
On the advice trusted venture capitalists, Mark Zuckerberg made one of his big bets in buying Oculus believing that it was the best of several attempts to bring virtual reality mainstream.
Given Zuckerberg’s resources, it was not a bad bet in my estimation.
Virtual reality has phenomenal upside, even for non-gamers like me. Humans use unconscionable amounts of resources to motor themselves around the planet to do things that could fairly be done in a virtual environment. Go to and from work. Visit the doctor. Go to school. Visit aged relatives. Attend a business meeting. Attend a concert. And the list goes on.
On one hand, this book is a story of a start-up. It is also the story of the rise and fall of a naïf and a sidebar to the story of Donald Trump...I kid you not! Lucky made the mistake of contributing to a non-profit supporting the election of Donald Trump that was labelled racist, white supremacist, misogynist, and anti-Semitic. When news of his involvement leaked, his future with the company and facebook was doomed.
More interesting to me, however, were the arguments Mark Zuckerberg made to Oculus. The biggest, of course, was the price Zuck was willing to pay. But Zuck also wooed them with the exclusivity of building the only interface with a facebook “experience,” and thus an attraction to developers and an automatic lock on potentially one billion users.
Zuckerberg seemed to be pitching some kind of a VR facebook experience, but the developers at Oculus were thinking of hitting a home run with a gamer experience. It seems that that buyer and seller were in different ball parks.
And this in a multi-billion dollar deal.
At face value it looks like the sellers really didn’t look closely enough at their suitor because immediately after the acquisition the principals were scratching their heads over attempts by facebook to integrate them physically in their workspace and culture.
For example, everybody at facebook used Apple computers, whereas the hardcore Oculus gamers were mostly PC users.
Also, the Oculus guys saw the advantages of leaving their games open to be used on other platforms. Zuck nixed that.
Oculus’ early fans were horrified that the platform was being developed by the evil facebook. The culture of facebook was and is so foreign to gamers. And we’re not just talking semantics.
Gamers really are different. And the games market is so huge that it’s really difficult to reorient them from the consoles and open source culture they come from. As big as facebook is, Zuck really bumped up into an immovable force.
In the couple of years since the facebook acquisition, Oculus devices have sold moderately well behind market leader SONY, and ahead of HTC. They are selling in the millions, good but not the killer app they expected.
This story is far from over.
This book is not a history of the future.
For a few bright, shining years a very young man, Palmer Lucky, headed his own tech start-up in the promising field of virtual reality gaming. Virtual reality is really a synthetic, immersive gaming environment in 3D. Lucky and his colleagues sold the company, Oculus, for billions to facebook.
On the advice trusted venture capitalists, Mark Zuckerberg made one of his big bets in buying Oculus believing that it was the best of several attempts to bring virtual reality mainstream.
Given Zuckerberg’s resources, it was not a bad bet in my estimation.
Virtual reality has phenomenal upside, even for non-gamers like me. Humans use unconscionable amounts of resources to motor themselves around the planet to do things that could fairly be done in a virtual environment. Go to and from work. Visit the doctor. Go to school. Visit aged relatives. Attend a business meeting. Attend a concert. And the list goes on.
On one hand, this book is a story of a start-up. It is also the story of the rise and fall of a naïf and a sidebar to the story of Donald Trump...I kid you not! Lucky made the mistake of contributing to a non-profit supporting the election of Donald Trump that was labelled racist, white supremacist, misogynist, and anti-Semitic. When news of his involvement leaked, his future with the company and facebook was doomed.
More interesting to me, however, were the arguments Mark Zuckerberg made to Oculus. The biggest, of course, was the price Zuck was willing to pay. But Zuck also wooed them with the exclusivity of building the only interface with a facebook “experience,” and thus an attraction to developers and an automatic lock on potentially one billion users.
Zuckerberg seemed to be pitching some kind of a VR facebook experience, but the developers at Oculus were thinking of hitting a home run with a gamer experience. It seems that that buyer and seller were in different ball parks.
And this in a multi-billion dollar deal.
At face value it looks like the sellers really didn’t look closely enough at their suitor because immediately after the acquisition the principals were scratching their heads over attempts by facebook to integrate them physically in their workspace and culture.
For example, everybody at facebook used Apple computers, whereas the hardcore Oculus gamers were mostly PC users.
Also, the Oculus guys saw the advantages of leaving their games open to be used on other platforms. Zuck nixed that.
Oculus’ early fans were horrified that the platform was being developed by the evil facebook. The culture of facebook was and is so foreign to gamers. And we’re not just talking semantics.
Gamers really are different. And the games market is so huge that it’s really difficult to reorient them from the consoles and open source culture they come from. As big as facebook is, Zuck really bumped up into an immovable force.
In the couple of years since the facebook acquisition, Oculus devices have sold moderately well behind market leader SONY, and ahead of HTC. They are selling in the millions, good but not the killer app they expected.
This story is far from over.
daphne_the_library_elf's review against another edition
2.0
This is one of the hardest books I've read to rate. I would put it closer to 2.5 stars, but not close enough to other books I rated 3 stars to use 3 instead of 2.
I picked up this book because of both an interest in VR and its history. It wasn't anything I really knew a lot about beyond the names of the big companies, so I knew little about key players. I found the first three parts interesting, but like most of the other mixed or negative reviews I've read, my main issue was with Part IV. It feels too close to propaganda for Luckey to my taste. My main issue as I was listening to the first three parts was that there seemed to be a too-good-to-be-true narrative with Luckey. Harris really seemed to be trying a little to hard to be hammering home the "he's such a nice guy!" narrative, particularly with bits like the he-literally-gave-someone-the-shirt-of-his-back story. It seems a bit disingenuous, especially with Luckey situated firmly as the protagonist and a lot of perspectives from those who didn't directly agree throughout his time at Oculus with him not presented. You don't have to be nice to be treated unfairly, but making someone look a little too nice can cast doubt on whether they really are innocent; it makes it seem like something is missing. This makes me a little dubious that this story is the full truth, or if things were strategically left out to create a clear hero and villains. Definitely an interesting book and I'd be interested in reading more from different sources to help contextualize this one, but I just can't shake that some behavior, opposing viewpoints, or valid concerns are fully overlooked and omitted to cast Luckey as an unquestionable martyr.
I picked up this book because of both an interest in VR and its history. It wasn't anything I really knew a lot about beyond the names of the big companies, so I knew little about key players. I found the first three parts interesting, but like most of the other mixed or negative reviews I've read, my main issue was with Part IV. It feels too close to propaganda for Luckey to my taste. My main issue as I was listening to the first three parts was that there seemed to be a too-good-to-be-true narrative with Luckey. Harris really seemed to be trying a little to hard to be hammering home the "he's such a nice guy!" narrative, particularly with bits like the he-literally-gave-someone-the-shirt-of-his-back story. It seems a bit disingenuous, especially with Luckey situated firmly as the protagonist and a lot of perspectives from those who didn't directly agree throughout his time at Oculus with him not presented. You don't have to be nice to be treated unfairly, but making someone look a little too nice can cast doubt on whether they really are innocent; it makes it seem like something is missing. This makes me a little dubious that this story is the full truth, or if things were strategically left out to create a clear hero and villains. Definitely an interesting book and I'd be interested in reading more from different sources to help contextualize this one, but I just can't shake that some behavior, opposing viewpoints, or valid concerns are fully overlooked and omitted to cast Luckey as an unquestionable martyr.
heatherbirchall's review against another edition
3.0
I could so easily have given this book 4 stars or even 5 because it was so readable. However, the author was so obsessed with Palmer Luckey that he left out so many things that would have been fascinating. There were only about 4 pages about Oculus's competitor, HTC Vive, and wouldn't it have been interesting to make a comparison with Steve Jobs - also kicked out of his company? There were so many protagonists at the start - but then the story was completely about Luckey, and we didn't hear anything more about John Carmack, Michael Abrash or Michael Antonov - to name a few. Were they happy when Facebook acquired Oculus? If you're going to call a book 'The History of the Future' how about enlightening the readers a little about that future. I was unimpressed when I heard the author speak - the book was actually better than I thought it would be, but readability isn't everything. I have a feeling that no-one will be reading this book next year.
vladco's review against another edition
3.0
Can't beat this book for a well-researched account of Oculus' founding moments, up to and including the departure of Palmer Lucky. The author had clear insider access, and was able to reproduce emails, chat transcripts, etc. I greatly enjoyed the book, but my interest was motivated by personal interest in this story. I can't recommend it as general business read because it doesn't include enough information about the other players who helped bring about "the revolution that swept virtual reality." It's ultimately a bit one-sided in its sweep.
ncrabb's review against another edition
4.0
Blake J. Harris is a magnificent writer. How do I know that? Because his book immersed me into a world I would never have voluntarily gone without him. I'm no gamer. I have the unfortunate personality of a fizzled firework when it comes to computer gaming. I just don't do it, and I don't understand the attraction to it at all. So why would I ever read a book about a gamer? Yeah, the guy is an inventor extraordinair, he's impressive by any measure, but no way am I spending more than five minutes on the subject unless Harris is there to draw me in and keep me reading. He did those things.
I heard Harris interviewed on a radio program; he was on the same program twice as I recall. The account of his book he provided fascinated me, and I was in no way disappointed.
Palmer Luckey lived in a trailer on his parents' property as a young man. He saw no need to keep the bathroom in it, since he could walk to the house and use Mom and Dad's bathroom. So he took it out and used the space for other things. But he wasn't the unambitious leach living off the folks kind of person by any means.
Palmer believed that virtual reality, primarily well inside the realm of science fiction and big-budget military labs, could become an integral part of individual gamers' lives. He was sure he could produce headsets and other VR accessories more cheaply and reliably than had heretofore been done. This is his story--the story of a young man who saw opportunity where others saw problems and set about solving the problems and turning them into opportunities.
My only brush with Virtual Reality can be found in the Ernest Cline book. I don't understand its language or the intricacies of how it works. But this book kept me interested to the final page.
This is the sad story of a man who ultimately was muzzled by his employer. I understand why he sold his company to Facebook. Wave two billion greenbacks in my face, and I'll sell whatever they want for that. But I wondered as I read this how different things might have been had he found some other generous purchaser of his products and ideas.
I don't have a problem with Facebook firing whomever it hires. But I was unsettled and a bit creeped out by the fact that Zuckerberg apparently wrote Palmer Luckey's official denial for supporting President Trump. Just wow!
I've not done the book any favors. You'd have to read it. There's much here of high drama and a kind of exhilarating pace as Palmer takes his fledgling company from one success to another, learning all the while from his mistakes. Palmer Luckey is portrayed here in a sympathetic light, and I was more than comfortable with that.
Harris's writing was impressive. He carefully explains the methods he used to create dialogue, and those explanations went a long way to enhance his credibility with me as a reader. The book left me disturbed and unsettled and with much to think about. I'd like to hope Palmer presses forward and finds new success. He comes across in the book as someone who would be resilient and who would find new ways to succeed. I wish Palmer Luckey could apply his ability and talent to the concept of developing way-finding software for blind and visually impaired travelers. Concepts used to create such software aren't all that far from the VR stuff he already understands. But I grossly digress.
I heard Harris interviewed on a radio program; he was on the same program twice as I recall. The account of his book he provided fascinated me, and I was in no way disappointed.
Palmer Luckey lived in a trailer on his parents' property as a young man. He saw no need to keep the bathroom in it, since he could walk to the house and use Mom and Dad's bathroom. So he took it out and used the space for other things. But he wasn't the unambitious leach living off the folks kind of person by any means.
Palmer believed that virtual reality, primarily well inside the realm of science fiction and big-budget military labs, could become an integral part of individual gamers' lives. He was sure he could produce headsets and other VR accessories more cheaply and reliably than had heretofore been done. This is his story--the story of a young man who saw opportunity where others saw problems and set about solving the problems and turning them into opportunities.
My only brush with Virtual Reality can be found in the Ernest Cline book. I don't understand its language or the intricacies of how it works. But this book kept me interested to the final page.
This is the sad story of a man who ultimately was muzzled by his employer. I understand why he sold his company to Facebook. Wave two billion greenbacks in my face, and I'll sell whatever they want for that. But I wondered as I read this how different things might have been had he found some other generous purchaser of his products and ideas.
I don't have a problem with Facebook firing whomever it hires. But I was unsettled and a bit creeped out by the fact that Zuckerberg apparently wrote Palmer Luckey's official denial for supporting President Trump. Just wow!
I've not done the book any favors. You'd have to read it. There's much here of high drama and a kind of exhilarating pace as Palmer takes his fledgling company from one success to another, learning all the while from his mistakes. Palmer Luckey is portrayed here in a sympathetic light, and I was more than comfortable with that.
Harris's writing was impressive. He carefully explains the methods he used to create dialogue, and those explanations went a long way to enhance his credibility with me as a reader. The book left me disturbed and unsettled and with much to think about. I'd like to hope Palmer presses forward and finds new success. He comes across in the book as someone who would be resilient and who would find new ways to succeed. I wish Palmer Luckey could apply his ability and talent to the concept of developing way-finding software for blind and visually impaired travelers. Concepts used to create such software aren't all that far from the VR stuff he already understands. But I grossly digress.
theebster's review against another edition
2.0
Ultimately, I did not finish this. The audiobook version just wasn't for me. I had anticipated business intrigue and stories of how a marvelous piece of technology was developed. Instead it was more in-depth explanations of every person who appeared along the way, with details about them that didn't seem to serve the overall book.
eegah's review
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
3.5
Compelling narrative, although the writing choices could get hammy at times. There's a lot of sympathy for the subjects of this book, so I couldn't help but feel that it wasn't really presenting the whole picture. But all the same, really informative and accessible. Almost wanted to get an Oculus as a result (darn those Facebook suits!)
Would probably pair nicely with a docu about how Facebook is a social engineering system.
Would probably pair nicely with a docu about how Facebook is a social engineering system.