Interesting Links for 14-07-2016

[andrewducker]

Nottinghamshire Police records misogyny as a hate crime (tags: police crime misogyny uk ) Jaguar Land Rover to have fleet of 100 driverless cars on roads by 2020 (tags: automation cars driving thefuture ) Auschwitz asks visitors not to play 'Pokémon Go' Even less appropriate than Psylocke in X-Men: Apocalypse!
(tags: nazis history games

Comments

[drdoug]

On Pokemon Go and inappropriate locations, I think there's two separate issues here.

The first is the location of the fixed landmarks in the game. For those who haven't played, there are 'Pokestops' and 'Gyms' that are located on real physical locations, which tend to correspond to physical landmarks or notable buildings. You have to visit these places to play. These locations are entirely in the control of Niantic, the company operating the game, and I think they have a very high degree of responsibility not to have those in inappropriate locations. Like, say, Auschwitz. There doesn't seem to be any way of reporting a location or accompanying text/photo as inappropriate, which I suspect may come to bite them. Curating a database that big is a monster task (sorry) and so it is certain that problems will arise - even if you get it all right at launch (which you can't), buildings and landmarks change over time. No way can you monitor that over entire countries without crowdsourcing.

The second issue is where you go to catch Pokemon. For those who haven't played, these are the little creatures (pocket monsters) you have to catch to play the game, and they appear pseudo-randomly around the real world. So far as I can tell, these appear pretty much everywhere, with possibly a slight bias towards high footfall areas, but I haven't checked thoroughly. I think there is a tendency for different sorts of Pokemon to appear in more-or-less suitable terrain (e.g. watery ones near water). Here I think the responsibility is firmly on the players not to play in inappropriate places. Of course, having cartoon monsters appear in incongruous locations (which includes mundane ones) is part of the fun, but I think it's fair to accuse the people who were playing Pokemon Go in Holocaust Museums of being appallingly insensitive.

[andrewducker]

I think you're right on both counts, although it would not be unreasonable for Niantic to create Pokemon-free zones in areas of a particularly sensitive nature.

Or where there are landmines.

Or crocodiles.

(I am not looking forward to the explosion when a child at a zoo is trying to capture a Pokemon and falls into the polar bear enclosure.)

[drdoug]

Yeah, we can definitely add 'dangerous cliffs' to the areas where it would not be unreasonable for Niantic to create Pokemon-free zones:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pokemon-go-men-fall-off-cliff-san-diego-android-ios-app-a7136986.html

That is honestly faster than I thought. Truly we live in wondrous times!

Although, as several people are remarking, the Pokemon Go thing has caught on so far so fast it does seem like something out of an sf story, where it turns out to have been a prelude to an alien invasion or some other civilisation-level disaster. Like everyone watching the green shooting stars in Day of the Triffids or something. Gotta catch 'em all! Before they catch us ...

[andrewducker]

It's a fascinating phenomenon.

See the story about race on today's link post?

[drdoug]

Oh, blimey. Eye-popping and depressing.

[andrewducker]

Yup. And something I hope they fix.