From the minefields in Bosnia to military bases in Indonesia, the Holocaust museums embassy where he fled Julian Assange, it seems that the Pokémon are everywhere. While Pokémon Go rampant throughout the world, the Saudi religious authorities renewed the fatwa issued in 2001 against the famous brand; the Japanese government issued a package of safety standards to be ahead of the official launch of the game in the country. The digital reality had never reached such a degree of integration in the real world.
The game has even entered the US election campaign: Hillary Clinton claimed not to know “who has created Pokémon Go … But it would not hurt to get them to create Pokémon Go … to vote! . ” In fact, Hillary Clinton knows very well who created Pokémon Go. They were his friends in Silicon Valley.
How to explain the success of Pokémon Go? Maybe just follow the money. Augmented reality is not new: the armed forces and the various navigation systems use it for years. To make innovative Go Pokémon is the fact that, for the first time, has become a mass technology. This is a real turning point, which will profoundly change the way we perceive and experience reality. Indeed, that will change reality itself.
Augmented reality, in a sense, it is even more interesting virtual reality, because it does not replace a simulated world to the real world , but it constitutes a sophisticated combination of both. Augmented reality, in fact, so much integrates the digital to the real (using the camera of our smartphone to transfer digital Pokémon in the physical world) as the actual in digital (letting our physical bodies in a simulated reality).
Pokémon Go was created by Niantic, whose chief executive, John Hanke, was among the founders of Keyhole, a pioneering software development company specializing in the development of geospatial data graphic that paved the way for Google Maps and Google Earth. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole is both Niantic. Without Google, then, Pokémon Go would not be possible. And although it was the subject of strong criticism (and legislation) for privacy and security reasons, it is in Google Glass that could be reflected by the first commercial success of the company to have played a role in the realization of the dream of augmented reality.
A symbiotic relationship
That’s why the feigned innocence of Hillary Clinton joke about Pokémon Go is important. The Democratic candidate for the White House can not but know that to take care of the digital part of his election campaign, by a startup called The Groundwork, it is the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt. Nor can it be ignored that Schmidt was recently at the helm of the Committee for Innovation of the Pentagon, or that, between January 2009 and October 2015, the top executives and Google representatives gathered at the White House well 427 times. It is clear that between the US State Department and the Silicon Valley there is a symbiotic relationship. But because the thing we should worry about?
You do not need to wonder what the ideology of Silicon Valley: just read Zero to One: notes on startups, or how to _b__uild the future_ (From zero to one: Secrets startups, or as we build the future) Peter Thiel. The author, a member of the so-called PayPal Mafia and owner of Palantir, clearly says that “competition is a thing of the past”, and that monopoly capitalism is not a disease or an exception, but it is the basis of every successful company . Google embodies one of the best examples: almost all its “innovations” (from Google Maps to YouTube) are the result of an acquisition.
Another case lucky, mentioned just from Thiel, it is to Tesla Motors: “The Tesla technology is so good that there are also other automakers rely: Daimler uses Tesla batteries, Mercedes-Benz transmission Tesla, Toyota its engine. General Motors has even created a task force to monitor the next moves of Tesla. The major technological achievement of Tesla Motors, however, does not reside in a specific component, but in its ability to integrate many different components in a single superior product “.
It is the best possible description of monopoly capitalism. The success of Silicon Valley does not have the talent, but buying: if Google, Facebook, Apple or Palantir have succeeded in creating monopolies so powerful and pervasive, it was thanks to such acquisitions.
Physical, digital, immortal
Pokémon Go marks a further step in this direction, because the penetration of the Silicon Valley in the most intimate aspects of our lives through social networks and new technologies has reached a level that would have integrated our physical reality in digital. It will not take long before physical and digital become indistinguishable: this is when you will be realized that the idea was the basis of Google Glass.
To understand the scope of the breakthrough represented by Pokémon Go, however, you must take into account the process of “total colonization” initiated by the Silicon Valley via the “internet of things” (complete network integration means we drive, the houses we live in and the tools we use), the “smart cities” (acquisition by the Silicon valley, the city’s infrastructure), social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), Google, innovations in transport (drones, Tesla Motors, etc.), “big data”, the total surveillance, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and, last but not least, immortality (the dream of Silicon valley to get us online and put your brain live forever).
All these areas attract large investments and generate significant innovations, transforming so much our reality to be integrated early every aspect of our lives in a large “global digital network” that, for the first time in the history of ‘humanity, is already making possible the creation of a “global brain” constantly interconnected.
The problem is not technology or innovation. The problem is monopoly capitalism: the fact that all this power is concentrated in the hands of a few companies in Silicon Valley, who make no secret of wanting to create “a wonderful world” in which technology is unique in the service of profit. While we are all busy playing Pokémon, companies follow the game’s motto: “Acchiappateli all!”. A fall in an inescapable network of technological consumerism, however, this time we are.
(Translation by Alberto Frigo)
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