Nintendo Harbinger: No, It's Not a Game

20x more efficient than the 1989 Game Boy

I have a Nintendo Gameboy stored somewhere, but not like this one: [bold added]

Custom designed to run entirely without batteries, the hand-held gaming device is powered by small solar panels as well as the button presses of the person playing it...

The implications of this demonstration are potentially huge, and not just for videogame junkies. In our battery-free future, carbon, moisture and light sensors that last for decades could be scattered by drones across farms.

Smart cities might be inundated with all-seeing, all-hearing surveillance devices; vehicles and buildings will use artificial intelligence to anticipate needs and perform simple tasks; and “implantables” in our bodies will more tightly integrate humans with everything else connected to the internet...

It’s this combination of traits—never needing to reboot, using very little power, and harvesting energy from the environment—that yields a system that could be a “perpetual” computer.

Devices that are so energy-efficient that they won't need batteries, that possess intelligence that already surpasses human beings', that can reproduce (much as software can write other software) and "teach" their offspring--it's a wonderful world that's approaching (/sarc).

Silicon Valley guru and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang "has predicted this future of computing will eventually include trillions of devices." Oh, joy.

The Luddites may have been mocked for centuries, but this is their moment.

Amy Vanderbilt and Emily Post are Long Gone

"PokeStop nearby" does not refer to the restaurant in Waipahu.

I love poke, the seasoned raw fish dish beloved by Islanders and increasing numbers of Mainlanders. There are now restaurants that specialize in poke, for example Pokeatery, Poki Bowl, and PokeStop.

However, be careful when typing the name of the latter on Yelp, the popular restaurant and services rating site. What pops up may not be just fish.

Yelp now has a filter that shows whether a PokéStop (a place where Pokémon Go players can get rewards) is near a business.

Gone are the days when eating establishments frowned on telephones, paper and pen, or even talking business at the tables. Today restaurants are actively courting patrons who furiously flick their thumbs across tiny screens, trying to snare imaginary monsters.

Yelp is just responding to market demand. As for the patrons, they are far, far away from their frowning grandmothers, so what's the problem?

A Concern I Didn't Use to Share

Pokémon Gym at the local church:
One way to attract the younger crowd.

The younger members of our household have been playing Pokémon Go since it was released on July 6th. Estimates of the number of players run about 20 million, the fastest rate of acceptance of any game in history---and it has yet to be distributed in Asia.

Like many tech inventions, a simple description makes it hard to see what the fuss is all about:

Pokémon Go is a smartphone game that blends the real and digital worlds, tasking players with exploring their neighborhoods to find creatures and treasure for in-game use....

Go is almost boringly simple: Once you encounter a Pokémon in the wild, Go switches into “capture mode,” where users flick Pokeballs at the creature until they nab it.

Staring at the smartphone instead of Cupid's Span (Chronicle)

As might be expected, when millions of shut-ins get out and "go," there are consequences, good, bad, and weird. From the Chronicle alone, a few headlines from the past week:

Animal shelters stand to benefit from rabid Pokémon Go gaming.

The SF Zoo finds three Pokémon Go gyms on property, rolls with it

4,500 say they'll hunt Pokémon together on the streets of San Francisco

‘Pokémon Go’ users help cops arrest attempted-murder suspect

Players get hurt hunting for ‘Pokémon Go’ monsters

Your humble blogger did download Pokémon Go but hasn't activated it due to privacy issues.

No game is that important---to be sure, a concern I would not have shared 30 years ago.

Let Me Rephrase That

I finally bought one, but…..

Colleague: "What are you doing this weekend?"
Me: "I’m going to play with my Wii."

Although there are thousands of Google hits on that phrase and its variations, don’t expect to see it in Nintendo's next holiday marketing campaign.

April 15th Letdown

April 15th fell on a Saturday this year, so tax filers had until Monday to mail in their returns. April 15, 2006 is important for another reason: it was the date that Nintendo was to publish its long-delayed and much-anticipated videogame, Zelda: Twilight Princess. (Some of the most popular videogames over the past two decades have been Zelda adventures.) Now it appears that the game's release date has been pushed back to the fall.

Like procrastinating taxpayers, Nintendo will suffer a penalty for missing another deadline, the loss of its fan base to the Playstation and Xbox. Our Nintendo Gamecube hasn't been turned on once this year, while our Microsoft Xbox is used (ahem) regularly. We don't intend to buy Nintendo's forthcoming console, the inaptly named Revolution. It is reported to be only a slight improvement over the Gamecube.

Will the fading Nintendo be able to rejuvenate its fortunes, a la Apple? I hope it does, but I'm not going to pay to find out.