An augmented reality map brings new dynamics to the game and new problems in the relationship between public and private
The next version of Pokémon Go is expected to be an augmented reality map of the world made by players. That was the announcement last Wednesday from the president of Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go.
Augmented reality is a technology that supplements the physical world with information, allowing virtual and real objects to coexist in the same space. You point your phone and reveal layers associated with specific places. These layers can contain pollution data, historical information about buildings, properties for sale and their prices, or even works of art.
The most famous case is certainly Jeff Koons’s project with Snapchat, which took his works to various places around the world and also became the first artwork to be virtually tagged with graffiti, using augmented reality, by another artist. All of this, however, could only be seen by those in Central Park.
A work by Jeff Koons commissioned by Snapchat (October 2017). Below, the work covered in graffiti, also in augmented realityA post shared by Sebastian Errazuriz (@sebastianstudio) on Oct 5, 2017 at 2:23pm PDT
All of this may seem very hard to imagine when described in words, but remembering the Pokémon Go craze two years ago, with thousands of people holding phones in their hands and hunting strange little creatures that appeared on their screens in the streets, makes it all clear.
But the challenge now is much greater. Creating a 3D world map, even one covering only public spaces at the player’s scale, as Niantic intends, depends on a capacity to collect and process data that other companies, such as Apple and Google, have yet to resolve. (Although Google recently announced it would launch an augmented reality feature for its Google Maps service by the end of the year.)
Gameplay and privacy
With an AR map, players can create structures that other users can see in the locations where the game takes place, and this will certainly enrich participation and gameplay significantly. But we must not forget that today, in the age of platform capitalism, cartography has migrated, as Benjamin Bratton has pointed out, from the exclusive domain of states to that of technology companies operating in so-called computing clouds, such as Google. And part of this “service” is delegated to users, who mark points of interest on the map and leave a record of their movements.
Niantic chief executive John Hanke, who has worked in mapping for many years and was part of Google’s “Geo” division (Google Earth, Google Street View, SketchUp, etc.), said the company would allow third-party developers to use its augmented reality map — something its executives believe has the potential to become a multibillion-dollar business. Considering that Pokémon Go has had 800 million downloads so far, that forecast is likely more than accurate.
Beyond outstanding technical issues, ethical and legal questions still need to be resolved concerning the new dynamics imposed on relations between public and private in our post-virtual age. This is a world in which networks have become so pervasive in everyday life, and the digitization of culture so extensive, that thinking in terms of a real/virtual dichotomy has become anachronistic. In this context, it becomes more than urgent to ask: who collects our data, where does it go, and what is done with this vast store of accumulated records?
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