Thursday, August 4, 2016

Pokemon GO and Political Dissidents

Would it be fair to say that the machinations of the geopolitical ebbs and flows throughout civilization only become more complex and unpredictable as populations swell and the rate of technological progress accelerates? I suppose such a relationship should be fairly obvious, and there's probably some formulaic expression that could be applied here, but I'd rather just talk about Pokemon GO.

I haven't tried Pokeman GO, and nor do I ever intend to - unless perhaps a complimentary version with more of an emphasis on STAY were released at some point. I do enough walking around without any incentive-driven prompting. My understanding of the game/platform is that it's essentially a 'geocaching' scavenger hunt with a score keeping system. The further you walk between 'known' locations of targets, the higher the point values become for 'capturing' these targets - graphical targets that are niftily superimposed upon the view of your mobile computing device's camera's view of the immediate surroundings. Or something like that.


Almost immediately possibilities began to occur to me: what if such a framework were applied to political dissidents instead of blobular creatures with quirky names? What if sophisticated robots equipped with weapons systems were introduced into the mix? What if the 'players' of the 'game' are really just unwitting, unpaid cartographers being used to fill-in spatial and informational voids that exist withing Google Earth 'street view'?

I foresee global Pokeman conventions, adaptive Pokeman specific technologies, and even Pokeman addiction support groups in the future.

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