Are the Pokémon coming for us?

BY CHRISTINA GWIRA

This past weekend, I finished watching the joint BBC and HBO series entitled “Years and Years”. It is a British mini-series that takes place in our present-day of 2019 to 15 years into the future. It eerily mirrored and drew allusions to issues that we are currently living through this very moment: the looming climate crisis; threat of nuclear war; the rise of fascist and far right governments all over the world and so much more. It also opened dialogue about the enhancements of technology and its benefits to the banking, health, economic and social systems that we all partake in on a daily basis. Though the series brought to light many of the peculiar positives and nuanced negatives our future beholds, I wanted to take some time out to highlight on one technological aspect that we are all too familiar with in our present version of 2019: augmented reality.

Augmented reality – also known as AR – provides us humans with the ability to beautify or terrify the real-world environments that we live in with computer-generated images or video. These computer-generated objects do not just interact with us through our eyes, but can also affect our sense of touch and hearing (I’m sure that taste and spirit are soon to follow, but that’s a discussion for a totally different article). Within “Years and Years” we see the possibility of how we as people can interact with AR to better our world, or make it much worse, through the character development of Bethany Bisme-Lyons. Bethany finds trouble accepting who she is as a person, quite literally. As she is entering into her teenage years, she feels that she’s not quite human, and thus wants to transition into becoming “trans-human” – becoming one with technology.

She tries her best to fit in and communicate this idea to her parents through the use of an app that allows her to mask and change her voice, face and features using augmented reality. Again, while our version of AR hasn’t quiet reached these heights yet, we do have some glimpses as to what the future will look like with AR freely available to us. A year or two ago the world was eagerly awaiting the rebirth of the legendary anime Pokémon. The rebirth came and was highly successful. However, Pokemon didn’t return to mainstream media as a TV show with new arenas, Pokémon and trainers. Instead, it made its entrance through a mobile game that allowed people to find and capture Pokémon all over the physical plane that we currently occupy with the use of AR. It took the world by storm. As a Brampton resident, I had not seen so many people cooped up on their phones in Gage Park in… forever. But yet, here people were, phones in hands, squealing with joy as they captured a new Pokémon.

Snapchat also looks to give us a peek into what we can expect to experience through AR with their soon to be released Spectacles 3. Their newest venture into the wearables market will allow users to create their own 3D objects which users will then be able to edit and add AR effects to. With Pokemon, the 3D objects and augmented reality was created for us to interact with. Through Snapchat, we see that we are edging closer to being able to create our own version of augmented reality. In Bethany’s case, she was able to use AR to express herself when words failed her. Over time, she gradually did integrate more and more with technology, getting implants that turned her hand into a phone, and her eyes into cameras. The question I’m asking you is this: what are the limits to what we will create, when given the tools? Will our future allow us to create realities where peace and love reign? Will we be able to make worlds where everyone must wear pink, or else? Could we create things far more sinister, for as the good book says, the heart of man is infinitely wicked. There is obviously no right or wrong answer, however, it does make you wonder: what can be more real, than reality itself?