HOW MICROSOFT'S ENGINEERS CREATED THE WORLD'S FIRST BROADBAND-CONNECTED GAME CONSOLE, BASED ON INTERVIEWS WITH THE PEOPLE WHO MADE IT.
There was a dream that was a box.
Part sci-fi, part nostalgia, this box would unite people from around the world and provide a platform for entertainment that would drive the future. In young computer scientist J Allard's dream, this box would change the world.
The dream started with an early
1980s television commercial for the Atari 2600. In it, entire families huddle around a plastic-and-wood-grain machine, playing versions of popular arcade games, cheering, laughing and stopping to stare in awe. It was a ludicrous and obnoxious marketing vision and it sold those plastic-and-wood-grain machines by the truckload. Its message: People unite through play.
But it was limited, this machine. It was local. To unite the world, Allard's dream box would have to connect the world. That's where the book came in.
Part two of Allard's dream came in the form of the 1992 novel by then little-known visionary author and journalist Neal Stephenson. In the novel, called
Snow Crash, Stephenson's protagonist is a sword-wielding, high-stakes, pizza-delivering ninja by day, and an internet-dwelling master sword fighter by night — on the internet. He is sarcastically named "Hiro Protagonist."
Before the internet was a part of the cultural consciousness, this book described it as a lived-in universe filled with interaction. Before there was a Second Life, a Facebook or an Xbox, Stephenson wrote of a world people could visit and enjoy over fiber wires, across oceans. It was a vision of a world united. For young computer geniuses like Allard, it was mind-bending.
Allard, fresh from Boston University, latched on to
Snow Crash like it was an oxygen tank. The book inspired him to make its vision of the future a reality. It bounced off the Atari commercial in his mind, shook loose the fantasies of his youth and the two halves of his dream recombined into a plan: Find a job at a place where he could build a box to make his dream a reality.
And that's where Microsoft comes in.
