With Pokémon Go we have entered yet another kind of reality. Places that are significant for whatever previous reason have now become overlain with another reality. There’s a superposition of place, a new kind of layering of reality, a virtual reality that takes precedence in the minds of the game’s players.
Case in point: Jeffrey Marder of West Orange, New Jersey, has sued Niantic Labs, Nintendo, and the Pokémon Co. Basically, the suit says that Pokémon Go players have trespassed on his lawn, but on a higher level, “Defendants have shown a flagrant disregard for the foreseeable consequences of populating the real world with virtual Pokémon without seeking the permission of property owners.”
Imagine, there you are, ready to fire up the barbeque. You go outside to the back yard, and as you walk onto your grass, you trip over a virtual character occupying a place once reserved for family, friends, and an occasional and real squirrel. Or there you are in a place deemed to be special by virtue of what it commemorates, such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, only to find players acting in total disregard of those visiting the site for its intended purpose. Superposition.
And then there are the violent consequences: Fifteen-year-old Arthur Digsby followed the game to a yard where he walked around the grass and surprised a widow by seemingly trying to enter her house to find the virtual character. Frightened by the intruder, the woman shot Arthur, killing him. More: Stabbings on the grass in a German park. A fight near the courthouse in Sherman, Texas. You can research other incidents easily enough.
You know Carl Sandburg’s anti-war poem “Grass”? It’s worth a read:
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
So now we can add to the sites of wars past the sites of wars future: Injury and death over grass that isn’t even there.
Case in point: Jeffrey Marder of West Orange, New Jersey, has sued Niantic Labs, Nintendo, and the Pokémon Co. Basically, the suit says that Pokémon Go players have trespassed on his lawn, but on a higher level, “Defendants have shown a flagrant disregard for the foreseeable consequences of populating the real world with virtual Pokémon without seeking the permission of property owners.”
Imagine, there you are, ready to fire up the barbeque. You go outside to the back yard, and as you walk onto your grass, you trip over a virtual character occupying a place once reserved for family, friends, and an occasional and real squirrel. Or there you are in a place deemed to be special by virtue of what it commemorates, such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, only to find players acting in total disregard of those visiting the site for its intended purpose. Superposition.
And then there are the violent consequences: Fifteen-year-old Arthur Digsby followed the game to a yard where he walked around the grass and surprised a widow by seemingly trying to enter her house to find the virtual character. Frightened by the intruder, the woman shot Arthur, killing him. More: Stabbings on the grass in a German park. A fight near the courthouse in Sherman, Texas. You can research other incidents easily enough.
You know Carl Sandburg’s anti-war poem “Grass”? It’s worth a read:
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
So now we can add to the sites of wars past the sites of wars future: Injury and death over grass that isn’t even there.
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