Marketplace Tech

Virtual reality company Oculus was going to revolutionize VR for gaming back in 2014. The Oculus Rift headset was for gamers by gamers, end of story. But then Facebook bought the company for about $2 billion because it had a much bigger vision for virtual reality as the future of engagement: people hanging out in VR like they did on the news feed, having a good time and watching ads for hours. This is an encore of part two of Molly Wood’s March 2019 interview with Blake Harris, author of “History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution that Swept Virtual Reality.”

Virtual reality is the technology that keeps on promising. For the past decade, the promise has seemed so much closer, especially when Oculus came along looking like such a game-changer that even Facebook invested $2 billion on it in 2014. Host Molly Wood spoke with Blake Harris in March, the author of “The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality.” This is a re-air of that conversation.

We couldn’t always predict the weather. It took huge strides in physics, atmospheric science, computer science and engineering to connect the dots between what’s going on in the sky at any given moment to whether we’ll have a rainstorm next week. And that effort has become bigger: more international and more expensive, involving supercomputers, the International Space Station, satellites and advanced models. Amy Choi talks to Andrew Blum, author of “The Weather Machine.”

Amazon turns 25 this week. Who would’ve thought back in 1994 that a tiny online retailer that just sold books might turn into a company that touches pretty much every aspect of our lives — what we buy, how we compute, how we watch movies? Molly Wood talks to futurist Amy Webb about the next 25 years of the giant tech firm.

A new California law goes into effect today, requiring any online chat bot that’s trying to sell you something or get you to vote a certain way to disclose that it’s a bot. No pretending to be a person trying to sell you an extended warranty in a customer service chat. Or no posing as a real person posting on Twitter about voting in an upcoming election.

Most of us have this kind of vague sense that our devices and tech services are trading our data for advertising. But it’s still shocking to find out exactly how much our gadgets and services, and even our browsers, are tracking what you do. Host Molly Wood talks with Washington Post Tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler about what he found out when he started tracking how his data is flowing.

It takes very little to get a soccer game started. Two or more people kicking at something, make a goal out of some chairs or maybe even just a gap between trees, and it’s on. Soccer can be very low tech. But clubs looking for an edge over the competition keep turning to high tech to analyze game play and help with training. Tech advances are noticeable for those who are glued to the TV this World Cup tournament as referees frequently use instant replay to make calls.

Wednesday and Thursday night in Miami, the Democratic presidential candidates will gather to debate on TV. But that’s the old-school version of how presidential candidates will try to reach you. Campaigns are already spending a lot more on digital advertising in this election, especially programmatic advertising, which automatically targets people based on habits, age and other information.

Science fiction author Neal Stephenson has a new book out called “Fall,” exploring how technology might mean the end of death. In the book, a billionaire who made his fortune in video games has his digital conscious uploaded after he dies. Stephenson says he was inspired in part by John Milton’s 17th century poem “Paradise Lost,”  about the afterlife and the forming of the world.

Author Neal Stephenson joins host Molly Wood to discuss his new book, “Fall,” and how he had previously underestimated the dark side of social media.