The answer is both zombies and evolution.
As the Pokemon craze continues, a huge group of players were seen charging, or more accurately herding, towards a digital Pokemon in a park.
The rare Pokemon that appeared caused a sort of blind hysteria, as people devotedly move toward it. Attention focused into their devices, you may say that the zombie apocalypse has arrived. Who knew it would look like this?
Augmented reality is a convenient phrase for the new technological medium that Pokemon go has ushered in. I say that because augmented implies better. Synthetic reality might be more appropriate.
Despite the absurd surveillance and zombification of humanity through this proprietary piece of spyware, I do appreciate the viral nerve it has hit. It’s unbelievable and scary and exciting at the same time. Watching the video of those crowds of people running to central park to catch a fucking Pokemon is astonishing and powerful. I don’t plan on living most of my life behind VR goggles or bionics but I’ll certainly experiment with it. Maybe a non spying version.
Synthetic reality is in itself neutral, as is digital communication and AI and whatever other tool we make. What matters is the nature of the code and public access to inspect it. Pokemon Go is closed-source and totally non-transparent.
Augmented reality is also reality; there is no going back.
Nintendo, Pokemon Go’s parent company, had a bigger one-day stock gain than any other company in the last 30 years after the game was downloaded by million of users in a matter of days. The popularity is in the numbers… but it’s really in the video of these mass hoards all being guided around by their devices.
For society, perhaps it is a good thing. People are out, walking around, talking and meeting each other. Though they are buried in their phones and tablets; they could likely be doing that anyway. Now they have a common goal; catch more Pokemon.
*Article originally appeared at Minds.
