In Jurgenson’s article, “Always Already Augmented,” he presents some interesting ideas on the social implications of an augmented reality mobile game. His main argument is that these types of games create different realities and experiences within the same shared physical space. This is to say that they create different social realities within the same physical reality. He argues that this is not unique to digital mediums and that “curbs without a ramp cut out” are a similar augmentation that cause a physical space to be experienced differently by different groups of people. He says that this is why Pokémon Go went from overnight sensation to hardly ever talked about so quickly. It just wasn’t as foreign to our way of thinking as people originally thought.
Another interesting proposal that he makes is that the animosity towards these groups of people walking around on their phones in shared spaces in order to play this game is derived from a feeling of being left out on the part of the people who do not play the game. They want the space to feel ‘shared’ and when other people are experiencing it differently, they get upset. A question that I have as a follow-up, and one that I presented in my discussion leader presentation is: Is it good to express this animosity and fight against these things that cause us to experience shared spaces in different ways? It is interesting because there are legitimate arguments on each side of this question. People should be able to experience their realities however they want as long as it doesn’t interfere in the realities of others, and it creates groups of people with new understanding of one-another. On the other hand, it drives wedges between us and makes it harder for us to connect as humans in a shared space. It is an interesting question and one that can only be answered through more experiences with this kind of technology but is absolutely something that should be considered as more and more of our lives become digitally augmented.
Hypermedia and Digital Rhetorics 