On Pokémon GO and “tech potential”

From Web3 to VR headsets and, of course, the deluge of AI-on-everything we're seeing now, whenever I catch myself thinking of the potential for good in any new technology, I remember Pokémon GO.

I've been here since the beginning of the web, and still the thing that got me the most disillusioned about the notion of tech having “potential” was, surprisingly enough, that game. At its peak, when I was walking around the parks in my city with a friend and talking about how cool that thing was, it was so glaringly obvious to me that Pokémon GO had off-the-charts potential. As a game, yes, but also (mostly?) as a social tool for bringing people together outdoors and even helping shape public spaces for the better.

I remember talking about an idea I had. Cross-referencing heat maps for Pokémon GO gameplay and those of street crimes to help allocate police officers around town and improve public safety. Or maybe using these gameplay heat maps to figure out in which public spaces people tended to gather that could need more infrastructure work by the city government. Maybe these ideas aren't great. I’m not a lawmaker! But they represent the general shape of the initiatives that Pokémon GO data could have supported had it ever been used for public good.

Then there was the idea of the “beacon”, an item I came up with. It would be something you could activate, perhaps at a Pokéstop, when you were out there playing, and it would notify all (or some) of your friends that you were out there playing, serving as an implicit call for them to get out the house, meet up, and touch some grass together. Pokémon GO could have been the first hyper-local social network, where instead of shouting about politics at strangers from across the world, you'd walk around and catch Pidgeys with people from your own neighborhood.

But no.

Of course not.

The only potential it ever saw explored was the promise to generate revenue through anti-fun and anti-social design.

This may seem like a very superficial "capitalism bad" analysis. But I do believe what happened to Pokémon GO is a straightforward microcosm of what happens to every piece of tech that seems to have potential for good. It draws in users (especially early adopters) on its promise, then it sticks around not fulfilling that promise, eventually killing every hope on the altar of shareholders.

It's sad, and it keeps happening, and I hate that I can't allow myself to have hopes for tech any longer.

Even Leaflet, the very cool website where I'm writing this right now: I want to, but I have a very hard time believing in any future for it other than a) not being successful enough to fully realize its promise, or b) turning into a shitty tech company like any other. It sucks.

I just wanted to catch Pidgeys with people from my neighborhood.