Cultural Minefields

About 2.3 per cent of the area formerly known as Yugoslavia is littered with unexploded bombs, mines and other mementoes from the 1990s freedomisations; and about fifteen per cent of the population live near the privileged zones. Among this number, the proportion of smartphone zombies is as yet unclear, but may soon undergo a salutary thinning-out. The new game Pokémon Go - which deploys the non-virtual world for the benefit of those who lack sufficient imagination to shoot virtual enemies, play virtual board games or fling virtual irritated avians at virtual squatting porcines, let alone read a book instead - has paradoxically exacerbated the usual smartphone syndrome of chronic inattention to one's surroundings: now that the surroundings have been hijacked by the game designers, the non-virtual world is deemed worthy of attention only inasmuch as it contains interactive virtual critters. Citizens of Bosnia have been warned to "respect demarcation signs of dangerous mine fields and not to go into unknown areas", in spite of the obvious cultural advantages of letting nature take its course.