You’ve heard of Pokémon Go by now, yes? It’s the pervasively viral, madness-inducing, privacy-invading, weirdly alarming, metaphysically destabilising new mobile phone game from Niantic. It’s potentially worth US$1,8bn/year. And it just may herald an important technological shift.
Conceptually, the app is fairly simple. Looking through their phones, gamers can see Pokémon characters superimposed on the world around them. The idea is to “catch” the creatures, and to pursue different varieties. The kids love it.
But it isn’t just a game: it’s a rudimentary use of something called augmented reality. Using cameras and sensors, more sophisticated AR can project computer-generated graphics on a user’s field of vision, typically through specialised goggles or visors. It can also show what the user is seeing to remote collaborators, who can in turn manipulate what graphics are displayed.
For industry, that’s a powerful combination. Factory workers are experimenting with headgear that displays safety alerts and instructions for machinery. Engineers are using the gadgets to help repair equipment. Rather than pore through technical manuals, they can peer through headsets that recognise what they’re looking at and indicate what needs to be done. As such gear improves, it should cut costs, increase accuracy, save time and make workplaces safer.
It also seems likely to spread. Lockheed Martin is using AR to assemble fighter jets. One day, it may prove useful in hospitals or on construction sites. Microsoft’s AR system, called HoloLens, was sent aboard the International Space Station, so that mission control might help with future repairs by dropping annotations into an astronaut’s field of vision. Even for the technically inept, AR could simplify tasks like assembling furniture or fixing a flat.
In each case, AR’s power is to project the limitless data of cyberspace onto the physical world. That will give people more information about their environment, new ways to manipulate it and a promising new venue for collaboration. In short, it will turn people into cyborgs, but in a good way.
For all that, Pokémon Go — like its predecessor in awkward virtual-physical collisions, Google Glass — suggests some looming conundrums. As with everything in the digital age, it will surely erode privacy. How might advertisers make use of such gear? And how do you keep everyone from wandering into traffic, getting robbed or falling off cliffs?
Those questions and many more will probably become more urgent as this thrilling, alarming technology takes off. Meantime, enjoy your weird game, Pokémon enthusiasts. You’re playing with the future. And it should only get better from here. — (c) 2016 Bloomberg LP
