the game had social benefits: “You’ll just run into people and spark up
conversations immediately.”
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Others reacted with concern, fear, or even a sense of doom.
A group of pediatricians wrote an opinion piece for the
New York
Times
expressing their concerns. They said that the game “cultivates
a false sense of security among children” and that the game’s lure
function, a way of attracting players to a location, “leaves children
potentially vulnerable to abduction and violence.”
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The New
York Police Department put out a statement to remind people to
watch their surroundings when using electronic devices such as
smartphones and tablets.
Others worried about the subtler possible effects of AR. In a
New York Times
article called “There Are Dangers to Remaking the
Real as a Virtual Place,” technology scholar Sherry Turkle expressed
concern about people spending hours per day playing AR games.
She explained, “At the end of the day, in our conversations about who
we met and what we did, we may be talking about things that don’t
exist.”
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Movie director Oliver Stone took it a step further. Speaking
at a comic book convention, he said the game was part of a trend of
people giving up their privacy to
corporations. He predicted, “You’ll
see a new form of frankly a robot
society. . . . It’s what they call
totalitarianism.”
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This collection of passionate
responses shows how a culture
figures out how to treat something
new. Both sides were objectively
correct about some things.
“
You’ll see a new form
of frankly a robot
society. . . . It’s what they
call totalitarianism.
”
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—Oliver Stone, director
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