Pokemon Go: Where others fear to tread

Barging into no-go areas on the plea that there are monsters to catch would generally send trespassers straight to the lock up or to a psychiatric evaluation given the unlikelihood of their assertions. But clearly the dream debut of the Pokemon Go mobile game app has imbued this excuse with a ring of truth: players are indeed blundering into all sorts of places on the hunt for anime creatures in a virtual reality mockup of their actual surroundings.

The positive feature of this record-breaking location-based “augmented reality game”, of course, is that people have to go out to play rather than merely display digital dexterity from the comfort of their couches or workstations. But a few incidents have already demonstrated that there is always a danger of players running into real monsters while in hot pursuit of virtual ones.

There will be mixed reactions, no doubt, about the creatures’ propensity to pop up virtually everywhere – one was even sighted at 10 Downing St this week before the newly anointed prime minister – with a complement of mobile-armed pursuers. After all, China apprehends the app could lead to the identification of its secret military installations but Hillary Clinton muses she is “trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokémon Go to the polls.”

We eagerly await India’s reaction to and utilization of this game.