QUOTE : Virtual reality was an abject failure right up to the moment it wasn’t. In this way it has followed the course charted by a few other breakout technologies. They don’t evolve in an iterative way, gradually gaining usefulness. Instead they seem hardly to advance at all, moving forward in fits and starts, through shame spirals and bankruptcies and hype and defensive crouches—until one day, in a sudden about-face, they utterly, totally win.