Why Pokémon Go is NOT Augmented Reality (And the Future of AR)

Willem Helmet Pickleman is a creative technologist who has spent his career living at the intersection of art and technology. He taught himself to code on YouTube, pushed augmented reality into advertising agencies that had no idea what it was, and ended up at Snapchat building AR tools used by millions, selling watches on wrists that weren't really there, and solving problems nobody had solved before.Now he's building multiplayer worlds out of colored blobs that you can actually walk through together.In this episode, we explore why Pokemon Go is not actually an AR game, what augmented reality can do that most people have never imagined, and why immersive technology might be the most powerful empathy machine ever built.We dive into:00:00 Introduction00:46 Growing Up Between Art Galleries and Video Games02:26 Teaching Himself to Code on YouTube03:21 Being the AR Guy Nobody Listened To05:50 How Snapchat Used AR to Sell 80% More Watches07:12 What Most People Get Wrong About Augmented Reality09:11 Why Pokemon Go Is NOT an Augmented Reality Game11:14 AR and VR Are Not Two Things, They Are One Continuum12:00 The Trough of Disillusionment and Where We Are Now15:42 The Dream Sandbox He Had as a Kid16:32 What He Is Most Excited About18:37 Why Good Storytelling Will Never Be Replaced20:13 World Labs, Gaussian Splatting and Building Multiplayer Worlds23:23 Hanging Out in a 3D Version of His Apartment25:18 Reliving Memories and Visiting Places That Only Exist in Your Imagination27:03 VR as the Greatest Empathy Machine27:33 Bringing Refugee Camps to the UN in Virtual Reality30:41 How VR Can Reduce Physical Pain32:03 Why We Need More Immersive Content and What AI Can Do About It34:32 English Is Not Enough, The Future of Building Worlds37:06 Build Small, Ship Fast, Do RepsThis conversation spans augmented reality, immersive technology, AI, and the deeply human question of what it means to build worlds that people can actually live in. If you've ever wondered what AR and VR can really do beyond games and filters, this is the episode for you.