Pokemon GO

[82_28]

This is a thing as we know now. I tried downloading it just to see. I wasn't going to play it. I just wanted to see for myself when something would pop up. Apparently my Galaxy Note 2 is incompatible so whatever. No love lost. But my brother and I were walking home late last night, a short stint, but there were no less than 5 people wandering around playing it. There's something really weird about this though. It reminds me of the Steve Martin movie The Jerk.

[Luther Blissett]

This is probably worth a new thread, good one.

Games and apps like this were what was required to force people off of two-dimensional web experiences and into augmented / virtual reality devices like Magic Leap and Oculus Rift after the dorky failure of Google Glass. It's obvious that phones are a clunky interface with the game, leaving people wanting more (and open to robberies, pickpocketing, etc). The immersive four-dimensional web experience is coming soon, and faster than we expect.

[RocketMan]

William Gibson saw this coming in the early 00s... Excellent book, this. Better re-read.



And yeah, about time on the thread. Just by the few reports I've read the popularity and the zombie-ness of it all is a bit scary. Also:

http://blackbag.gawker.com/pokemon-go-i ... 1783461240

And it’s not like Pokémon Go itself doesn’t already have a direct(-ish) line to the CIA. After all, Pokémon Go was created by Niantic, which was formed by John Hanke.

Now, Hanke also just so happened to help found Keyhole. What does Keyhole do, you ask? I’d tell you to go to Keyhole’s website—but you can’t. It just takes you straight to Google Earth. That’s because Keyhole was acquired by Google back in 2004.

Before that, though, Keyhole received funding from a firm called In-Q-Tel, a government-controlled venture capital firm that invests in companies that will help beef up Big Brother’s tool belt. What’s more, the funds In-Q-Tel gave Keyhole mostly came from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), whose primary mission is “collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence.”

[DrEvil]

^^Would also recommend Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End. It's probably the most detailed description of what augmented reality might one day look like available. A lot of people working on AR use the book as a sort of guide, just like Google uses the Star Trek computer as a guide for how Google search evolves (that's actually Google search's stated goal, to recreate the Star Trek computer).

[Agent Orange Cooper]

FWIW, not all doom n gloom here.

http://www.sciencealert.com/pokemon-go- ... depression

Pokémon Go is reportedly helping people with their depression
With more people now using the app than Tinder - and Twitter soon to be overtaken - it appears that Pokémon Go is motivating users to get up and out of the house - something that's often a struggle for people suffering from depression or anxiety.

Here are just a few of the hundreds of Tweets out there raving about the game:

#PokemonGo has already been a better treatment for my depression than anything my doctor prescribed or therapist recommended

— Jesseanne Pope (@gleefullyhello) July 11, 2016
#PokemonGO has changed me so much for the better in only a week. Dealing with BPD, depression& anxiety it has helped me get out of the house

— Lara (@38Violetqueen) July 11, 2016
Real talk - as someone with anxiety/depression, the fact that I've spent most of this weekend outside with friends is unreal. #PokemonGo

— HiRez David (@uglycatlady) July 10, 2016
With the app only out for a week, scientists haven't been able to study this link just yet, so we can't say for sure what effects the app is having.

But Grohol thinks that the benefit comes from encouraging people to get moving around - something that study after study has shown is beneficial for mental health.

[brekin]

Yes, it is big and getting bigger. Interestingly, a whole population, digital horde, is now coming out of their cyber caves and are now roaming about in the meat space generating news stories. Ahh, progress marches on.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Since you rude bastards couldn't extend the courtesy of providing some context and/or description of this f'ing Pokemon Go thingy and how it differentiates itself from other forms of sorcery, I took to the web during my 5 min of downtime and found the below link (painstaking -- only 3 min of downtime remaining!)

For the uninitiated -- like myself:

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/11/12129162/p ... d-ios-game

Pokémon Go, explained
Everyone is suddenly catching Pokémon fever again. Here’s what’s going on.

You may have heard stories of people hunting down Pokémon on their office desks, in hospital rooms, and even in bathrooms. One teenage girl even found a dead body while looking for Pokémon. And police in Missouri claimed that four suspected robbers lured in victims with the possibility of Pokémon.

What the hell is going on?

Well, after a few years lying relatively low, Pokémon is making a bit of a comeback. The Nintendo-owned franchise, which exploded in popularity in the late 1990s, is again taking America by storm — this time through Pokémon Go, its biggest entry into the mobile space, now available for a free download on Android and iOS. It’s so popular that it’s on the verge of overtaking Twitter in terms of daily active users on Android.

In simple terms, Pokémon Go uses your phone’s GPS and clock to detect where and when you are in the game and make Pokémon "appear" around you (on your phone screen) so you can go and catch them. As you move around, different and more types of Pokémon will appear depending on where you are and what time it is. The idea is to encourage you to travel around the real world to catch Pokémon in the game. (This combination of a game and the real world interacting is known as "augmented reality." More on that later.)



So why are people seeking out virtual creatures while at work and as they go to the bathroom? Part of the reason Pokémon Go is popular is that it’s free, so it’s easy to download and play. But more importantly, Pokémon Go fulfills a fantasy Pokémon fans have had since the games first came out: What if Pokémon were real and inhabited our world? But to understand why people are so enthusiastic about the idea, we first need to go back to the late 1990s — to the original Pokémon games.

The Pokémon games take place in a world populated by exotic, powerful monsters — they can look like rats, snakes, dragons, dinosaurs, birds, eggs, trees, and even swords. In this world, people called "trainers" travel around the globe to tame these creatures and, in an ethically questionable manner, use them to fight against each other.

Based on the premise of bug catching — a popular hobby in Japan, where the games originated — the big goal in the Pokémon games, from the original Pokémon Red and Blue to the upcoming Pokémon Sun and Moon, is to collect all of these virtual creatures.

The first generation of Pokémon games began with 151 creatures, but the catalog has since expanded to more than 720. In Pokémon Go, only the original 151 are available.

The games took the world by storm in the late 1990s — a big fad widely known as "Pokémania." The original handheld games, Pokémon Red and Blue, came out in 1998 in America, followed by Yellow in 1999 and Gold and Silver in 2000. With the games came spinoffs like Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Pinball in 1999, a popular TV show, movies, trading cards, and a lot of other merchandise. For a few years, Pokémon was on top of the world. (The franchise is still fairly big; it’s just not the cultural phenomenon that it once was.)

But since the games came out for Nintendo’s handheld consoles, fans all around the world have shared a dream: What if Pokémon weren’t limited to the games’ world? What if they were real and inhabited our world? What if we could all be Ash Ketchum, the TV show’s star trainer, who wanders the world in his quest to catch them all and earn his honors by defeating all the gym leaders? I want a Pikachu in real life, dammit!

Unfortunately, Pokémon aren’t real — at least not yet. But technology has evolved to be able to simulate a world in which Pokémon are real. That’s essentially what Pokémon Go attempts to do: By using your phone’s ability to track the time and your location, the game imitates what it would be like if Pokémon really were roaming around you at all times, ready to be caught and collected. And given that many original Pokémon fans are now adults, this idea has the extra benefit of hitting a sweet spot of nostalgia, helping boost its popularity.

[Agent Orange Cooper]

ruh-roh!

[The Consul]

Pokemon MKULTRA-Go

[divideandconquer]

Okay, this is what I've got so far:

Pokeman Go was released on 7/7/16.

Pokeman Go wants your time, energy and brain power as much as your location, photo, voice etc.

Pokeman Go is the perfect crowdsourced geospatial program....crowdsourcing geospatial analysis

Pokeman Go is gathering Geospatial Intelligence data that would allow an AI to navigate almost anywhere on Earth that a human could go without even having to think. Extremely valuable data for the military to have. A 3D model of the United States would allow drones to navigate at levels never before seen without having to understand the environment and/or without the need for an operator behind the joystick.

GEOINT encompasses all aspects of imagery (including capabilities formerly referred to as Advanced Geospatial Intelligence and imagery-derived MASINT) and geospatial information and services (GI&S); formerly referred to as mapping, charting, and geodesy). It includes, but is not limited to, data ranging from the ultraviolet through the microwave portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as information derived from the analysis of literal imagery; geospatial data; georeferenced social media; and information technically derived from the processing, exploitation, literal, and non-literal analysis of spectral, spatial, temporal, radiometric, phase history, polarimetric data, fused products (products created out of two or more data sources), and the ancillary data needed for data processing and exploitation, and signature information (to include development, validation, simulation, data archival, and dissemination). These types of data can be collected on stationary and moving targets by electro-optical (to include IR, MWIR, SWIR TIR, Spectral, MSI, HSI, HD), SAR (to include MTI), related sensor programs (both active and passive) and non-technical means (to include geospatial information acquired by personnel in the field)

Pokeman Go is a social conditioning tool toward accepting as normal technology that superimposes a digital facade on the real world.

Pokeman Go requests full access to your Camera, Location, Files, Identity, etc. An application that has access to the camera & all device files etc. can takes pictures, save it to temporary files, upload to a remote server...

The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual "nodes" to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.

Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project.

"SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP)," the paper reads, so that military leaders can "develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners".

SWS also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, and street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.

[SonicG]

Hmmm...

Live in the moment: the Situationists & Pokemon Go

...
On the other, there’s something faintly distasteful about the recuperation of specific real histories into a billion-dollar corporate mythology. Nearly 150 people lost their lives when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory burned to the ground, entirely needless deaths caused by the atrocious working conditions of the garment trade. The tragedy became a rallying point for the trade union movement, the name of the factory, a shorthand reference to employers’ greed.

Now, though, it’s three free Pokeballs.

We might also say, then, that, even as the game leads players to embrace the derive, it also offers a remarkable demonstration of the phenomenon that Debord critiqued.

‘The whole life,’ he wrote, ‘of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.’

In particular, Debord emphasises the remarkable ability of the modern city to destroy its own past.

‘The “new towns” of the technological pseudo-peasantry,’ he argues, ‘are the clearest indications, inscribed on the land, of the break with historical time on which they are founded; their motto might well be: “On this spot nothing will ever happen – and nothing ever has.” Quite obviously, it is precisely because the liberation of history, which must take place in the cities, has not yet occurred, that the forces of historical absence have set about designing their own exclusive landscape there.’

Augmented reality might defamilarise urban banality but it does so by colonising fantasy for multinational branding: nothing says ‘forces of historical absence’ like an elaborate mythos accreted by years of corporate marketing.

Then again, why should it be otherwise? Capitalist banalisation inevitably seizes every aesthetic critique of capitalist banalisation, while utopia and dystopia always shadow each other.

https://overland.org.au/2016/07/live-in ... okemon-go/

[stickdog99]

I was wondering what all my students were doing instead listening to me today.

[82_28]

I was wondering what all my students were doing instead listening to me today.

I was just saying this earlier today. What's going to happen once the school season starts?

[backtoiam]

Pokémon Go Linked To CIA, Augmented Reality Software Could Turn Smartphones Into Imperial Probe Droids
Published July 11, 2016

So that’s why Pokémon has been plastered all over social media and the television this weekend. Nothing in this world is accidental as Kit Daniels reports:

The ‘augmented reality’ mobile game Pokémon Go, which uses the player’s smartphone camera to ‘add’ Pokémon to real-world locations, has ties to the CIA.

The developer of Pokémon Go, Niantic, Inc., was founded by John Hanke, who previously received funding from the CIA’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to develop what eventually became Google Earth.

In-Q-Tel was once described as an “independent strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community.”

It’s easy to see why the CIA would have an interest in the software behind Pokémon Go; the game utilizes the player’s camera and gyroscope to display an image of a Pokémon as though it were in the real world, such as the player’s apartment complex or workplace bathroom.

Software like that could theoretically turn millions of smartphone users into ‘Imperial probe droids’ who take real-time, ground-level footage of their cities and homes, reaching into dark alleyways and basements which spy satellites and Google cars can’t reach.

For example, in the 2008 film The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne intentionally places a back door into cell phones sold by his company to implement a city-wide sonar grid.




https://youtu.be/Kr7AONv3FSg

Did that scene from the film reveal the intent behind ‘augmented reality’ software?

In the early 2000s, In-Q-Tel invested in Keyhole Inc., the company founded by Hanke which developed 3D “flyby” images of buildings and terrain from geospatial data collected by satellites.

The name “Keyhole” was a homage to the KH spy satellites first launched by the American National Reconnaissance Office.

Google later purchased Keyhole in 2004 and rolled its technology into Google Earth.

The CIA established In-Q-Tel in 1999 as its venture capital arm to “identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests,” according to the firm itself.

“If you want to keep up with Silicon Valley, you need to become part of Silicon Valley,” says Jim Rickards, an adviser to the U.S. intelligence community familiar with In-Q-Tel’s activities. “The best way to do that is have a budget because when you have a checkbook, everyone comes to you.”

http://thomasdishaw.com/

[stefano]

I think 'augmented' reality is more going to be a case of pulling your phone out of your pocket from time to time to use it, than of everyone walking around with Oculuses or Google glasses all the time. In the same way that we don't have phone earpieces in all the time.

What a ridiculous adjective for it though - augmented.

Nintendo's stock price is up sharply. What is the bet? Will they sell more Pikachu T-shirts because of this? Or sell the data from Pokemon Go to interested parties venal and manipulative? Ha.

Rocketman - what Gibson novel was that? The image doesn't come up for me. I enjoyed some of his early books but bought Zero History not long ago and was really disappointed.