Augmented Reality | Pokémon GO update

Following writing about AR goes viral | Pokémon GO at the end of last week, I though a brief update might be useful. Especially in relation to the safety of your pupils (or, indeed, children amongst your family and friends).

Since that last post we have had news of people falling off a cliff, a mass stampede in Central Park (NY), teens stuck in a cave, more phone robbery and teens in Florida shot at. All while playing Pokémon GO. There was also the idiot who called 999 to report a ‘stolen Pokemon’.

Though let’s not forget the Health benefits of Pokémon Go.

If you are a member of CAS (it’s free to join), you will find a useful discussion on their forums about how best to provide safeguarding advice to pupils and their families before the summer holidays.

Useful guidance has been provided by the NSPCC and the UK Safer Internet Centre. My own children’s school has emailed the following to all parents (which suggests something of a misconception about the gameplay, but the central advice is sound):

Pokemon Go explained:
Pokemon Go is an app enabling users to create a character and then use Geo Location to find other users that also have their own character. A map is provided which shows nearby Pokemon on it. The basic premise of the game is to walk or ride towards the Pokemon in order to capture it and increase your game status. The game is fast becoming very popular and many people are enjoying playing the game in a safe and responsible way. There are, however, some risk factors that need to be considered, including becoming so absorbed in the game that players lose awareness of the environmental around them and stranger danger.

[Followed by a link to the UK Safer Internet Centre advice.]

Beyond safety issues, the phenomenon that this game has become continues to generate interesting articles about both the game itself and AR generally;

• Pokemon made me do it (BBC)
• Pokédrone allows users to catch out-of-reach Pokémon (Dezeen)
• Churches sign up to become Pokestops (BBC)
• Why do Pokemon avoid black neighbourhoods? (BoingBoing)
• Pokémon Go’s retention rates, average revenue per user are double the industry average (TechCrunch)
• How Pokemon Go took over the web (BBC)
• China is worried Pokémon Go will uncover secret military bases (Cult of Mac)
• Pokemon Go Is a Glimpse of Our Augmented Reality Future (Singularity Hub)
• How Pokemon Go did what these 3 hype-heavy startups couldn’t (TechCrunch)
• The Best Mobile AR Apps That Aren’t Pokémon Go (Gizmodo)
• Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Our World (Book review, The Guardian)

I’ve included the last of these because, clearly, Pokémon GO uses GPS and this is a review of a newly published book about GPS that looks rather good.

AR goes viral | Pokémon GO

When we published our materials on Augmented Reality (AR) a few months ago it was quite hard to point to really compelling examples of AR.

And then, just over a week ago Pokémon Go was released in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Earlier this week it came to Germany and then yesterday it was released in the UK. The media interest in the last 10 days has been intense, hyperbolic even.

In case you have somehow missed all the excitement, Pokémon GO is an AR version of the classic Pokémon game, played on a smart phone, that, as the screenshot shows, inserts Pokémon characters  into the reality seen through a phone’s camera. The basic gameplay is that you walk around your locale using GPS to track and capture Pokémon. Other features are layered on to this foundation, some of which will be noted later in this post.

Now, I have never, ever played Pokémon in any form before yesterday, but my interest in AR led me to download it yesterday morning, as soon as it was available in the UK (I was actually watching out for it to be released on the UK app store – which is unusual behaviour for me…). And I have to report it is rather compelling. The basic game is free with in-app purchases, though it seems likely that sponsored content will appear in due course.

But why the media frenzy? Mainly because Pokémon GO is now the biggest mobile game in U.S. history, not only in the number of downloads but also by daily use – and it appears to be heading that way on this side of the Atlantic; last night the game became unplayable for a while as its servers struggled under the demand – a phenomenon that has repeated every time there is a new country launch. It has driven Nintendo’s value skyward and it’s so popular it looks as though around 22,000 people will turn up to a Pokémon GO ‘crawl’ in San Fransisco this Saturday (tomorrow).

What I think is really interesting about this is that for the first time we will get a sense of the implications of mass use of AR. The game appears to be driving traffic to real-world locations (for better or worse) including churches, police stations, Downing Street and a holocaust museum, raising the question of who owns the virtual space around your home. Some players seem to think no setting inappropriate.  On the other hand, a rather lovely story involves a 3am encounter between a middle-aged white player, two young black players and a police officer – though this is rather offset by the very plausible fears that the game could be a death sentence for a black man.

After just 10 days or so we have reports of a dead body being found by a teenager, planned muggings of players, a paedophile attempting to use the game to meet children, players being injured through inattentiveness to the real world, and risking injury by driving and playing (also in Australia). On the positive side, there’s the accidental exercise and the suggestion that playing brings mental health benefits.

And, of course, there have been the inevitable spoof stories of chaos caused by the game, conspiracy theories and even the accusation that it is a tool of Satan and ISIS. Regarding a more plausible real-world risk, it appears that initial concerns about the privacy settings in the app have now been resolved.

So, we definitely have a compelling example of AR now (there has been the claim it’s not proper AR, but for the purposes of our Disruptive Technologies project it counts). Opinions differ over whether the huge success will be maintained or it will turn out to be a flash in the pan. Either way I think there will be lessons we can learn about the potential for impact and disruptiveness from AR that may help us better predict the consequences of other proposed AR systems.

As far as schools are concerned, I have two thoughts; firstly if you want to introduce the idea of AR to your pupils as a Disruptive Technology then not only might Pokémon GO be a great way in but its success means that many will come to the topic with some understanding of the technology.

Secondly, watch out; the last days of term may well be infiltrated by a new distraction for your pupils – a different kind of disruption. Schools may want to warn their pupils (and carers) of the potential risks (see above) before the Summer holidays and note that the NSPCC is concerned.

Just in case you want more, here are some longer related articles:

• How augmented reality technology erases the human v machine boundary (The Guardian)
• Hype check: Pokémon Go says more about Pokémon than it does about AR (TechCrunch)
• Pokémon GO has redrawn the map of what people find important about the world (Dezeen)
• “Pokémon Go” Is The Most Addicting App In Years. Here’s Why It Matters (Fast Company)
• The brilliant mechanics of Pokémon Go (TechCrunch)

 

Augmented Reality Teacher Briefing now available; but with a word of warning

Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the disruptive technologies we have identified as suitable for teaching in secondary school.

AR is a live, direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.

A longer definition is that AR is a real-time direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment that is enhanced or augmented by adding virtual computer-generated information to it. Accordingly, an AR system: (i) combines real and virtual objects in a real environment, (ii) aligns real and virtual objects with each other so that as the view to a real object changes, the augmented object connected to it changes accordingly, and (iii) runs interactively, in three dimensions, and in real-time. AR technologies enhance human perception and help seeing, hearing, and feeling the surrounding environment in new and enriched ways. This is achieved by making people sense virtual objects, which appear to coexist in the real world. AR can also be used to hide visual elements of the real world to allow people to focus on specific aspects (Diminished Reality).

AR is distinguished from Virtual Reality (VR) systems in which the user is immersed in a computer-generated environment that completely replaces sensory input from the real world.

The AR Teacher Briefing is now available, but before we enthuse about this and other new and emerging technologies it is prudent to inject a note of caution. There is often public disquiet about new and emerging technologies, especially those that are seen as disruptive. Government and industry are often bemused by this rejection in the face of what seems to them the obvious benefits of such technologies. The rejection of genetically modified foods by the public in the United Kingdom is one such example.

Professor Phil Macnaghten and his co-workers have investigated this by recording talk about emerging technologies in a range of focus groups composed mainly of lay people with little technical knowledge about such technologies. Interestingly the analysis of the talk revealed five underlying cultural narratives describing attitudes/beliefs towards such technologies that embodied this disquiet. These narratives were:

1. Be careful what you wish for – the narrative of Desire
2. Being kept in the dark – the narrative of Alienation
3. Messing with nature – the narrative of the Sacred
4. Pandora’s box – the narrative of Evil and Hope
5. The rich get richer – the narrative of Exploitation.

We believe that it would be wrong to dismiss such concerns out of hand and also that it is important for teachers to be aware that they might exist amongst their pupils. There is an analogy here with the idea of pupils’ alternative constructs in science. Simply telling pupils that such ideas are wrong in no way helps them to change their minds. Similarly dismissing concerns about new technologies that are in fact based on deeply believed ‘cultural narratives’ would almost certainly be counterproductive. Our position is that we would not want the teacher’s position to prevent pupils acknowledging their sympathy towards the narratives. Overall we want pupils to use critique in an informed but not overly skeptical way and engage with the narratives in a way that is neither completely dismissive nor totally accepting.

Phil’s research goes further than simply identifying such concerns. He wants the public to be engaged in the innovation process much earlier; having a voice that informs what science and technology ‘does’ in society. He is concerned with the democratization of the development and deployment of technology. This is very much in line with the thinking of the Disruptive Technologies Project.

You can see and hear Phil describe his research in this short video clip:

And as a cautionary tale this science fiction short describes a future world in which robotics and AR overlap:

So given what Phil’s research has revealed and the sci-fi cautionary tale above, what might we want our pupils to consider when speculating about future uses of AR?