Last month, I returned from an overseas trip to a friend’s wedding to find the zombie apocalypse happening in my neighborhood near downtown San Jose. People of all ages and demographics united together in what looked like strange cult gatherings in public parks, stumbling around the streets of the South Bay with eyes glued to their phones and occasionally yelling something strange like, “OMG I hatched a Nidoking!” Cars would come to abrupt halts in front of me at unexplained times—I half expected a scene from the movie Zombieland to unfold where Woody Harrelson would leap out from an SUV ready to give me the nickname Minnesota and help navigate safely back to my parents’ farm.
Pokémon Go was released in the US on July 6, 2016. Unless you’ve been living off the grid in a yurt (in which case you won’t be reading this blog post), you’ve probably observed that this was much more than a game release and more like the dawn of a new way of life for some people. While there have been well-publicized challenges as the game has scaled to reach millions, it’s an amazing…