Pokémon Go isn’t really a game. It’s a new technology.

Ezra Klein writes at Vox,

Pokémon Go isn’t really a game. It’s a new technology.

Venture capitalist Chris Dixon has a line I like. "The next big thing will start out looking like a toy," he says. Welp, Pokémon Go looks like a toy. Hell, it is a toy. But it’s also the first widespread, massive use case for augmented reality — even though it’s operating on smartphones that aren’t designed for AR. So what’s going to happen as the hardware improves, the software improves, and the architects learn to use these more immersive environments to addict us more fully?

...The easy analogy here is drugs. We know drugs are a cheap way for people unhappy, or unsatisfied, with this reality to escape to a (temporarily) more pleasurable one. We’ve stanched that by making most recreational drugs illegal. But VR and AR are a consumer technology. We don’t make consumer technologies illegal. We celebrate them, write stories about them, improve them. And so they get better, more addictive, more alluring.

Read more here.