pokémon

One of the casualties of the advent of rapid and ubiquitous, electronic communications was supposed to be place.  That is, when you can virtually be anywhere at any time, then it would hardly matter where you actually are.

This reduction has occurred to some extent.  Consider the recent Pokémon Go phenomenon.  Players of the augmented reality game can collect a Rattata, for example, almost anywhere.  Whether the virtual creature is encountered in Canada or Brazil, say, makes no difference.

Pokémon Go is hard to avoid.  Players wander the highways and byways, and the halls of academe, collecting Squirtles and the like.  

Like any broadly adopted technological phenomenon, the game comes with trade-offs, that is, features that work to the advantage of some and disadvantage of others.  As ever, opinions may differ about what exactly those are.