What the Wartortle?! by Robin Phillips

On Augmented Reality & Our Impending Blended Digitized Future

At a park in Post Falls, Idaho, near where I live, there is a pond where you can see different types of wildlife, including ducks, muskrats, and turtles. Once my children and I even saw a beaver.

One autumn afternoon in 2016 when my children and I visited the park, we observed that it seemed unusually full of people. Yet the other visitors seemed strangely absent-minded and even slightly disoriented. Suddenly I heard a man talking to me. "Did you see the wartortle over there?" the man, probably in his late twenties, asked, as he started to approach me.

"A what?" I replied.

"The wartortle. I just saw one over there by the pond," he said excitedly, taking it for granted that I knew what...

Robin Phillips

has a Master’s in Historical Theology from King’s College London and a Master’s in Library Science through the University of Oklahoma. He is the blog and media managing editor for the Fellowship of St. James and a regular contributor to Touchstone and Salvo. In addition to working as a ghost-writer for celebrities, his work has featured in a variety of publications, including the Colson Center, World Magazine, Sky News, and the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Phillips is the author of Gratitude in Life's Trenches: How to Experience the Good Life Even When Everything Is Going Wrong (Ancient Faith, 2020), and Rediscovering the Goodness of Creation: A Manuel for Recovering Gnostics (Ancient Faith, forthcoming 2023). He is a contributor to Pain, Suffering and Resilience: Orthodox Christian Perspectives (Sebastian Press, 2018), and Finding the Golden Key: Essays Towards a Recovery of the Sacramental Imagination (Eighth Day Press, forthcoming 2023). He operates a blog at www.robinmarkphillips.com.