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Aging Baby Boomers Spawn New Tech Markets
PreacherTom writes "With the generation of Baby Boomers starting to enter their 60's, 75 million Americans will cross that line in the next 20 years. For the first time, though, this group will be composed of people who have grown up with technology. Enter a new industry: tech for the elderly that provides greater independence and better health, with an eye to users' privacy and dignity. Some examples (with pictures) would be the Pill Pets, stuffed animals with LCD's that tell their owners when to take their medicine, and Aware Car, which provides electronic warning systems to compensate for losses in reflexes." A national coalition, the Center for Aging Services Technologies, was established in 2003. Intel is doing some imaginative work in the area of assistive technology.
Combine Roomba, audio microchips, and motion sensors and have an automated robot to yell to tell those damn kids to stay off the lawn.
had to be said
Because of course, technology is a recent discovery. Fire was only discovered is the early 1920s, and as recently as the 1950s most Americans lived in caves and ate dirt.
Oh, and the world was black and white back then, too. When everything got colorized, old pictures and movies stayed the same, because they were color pictures of the black and white world.
So the elderly will have Aware Car, and the rest of us will need Aware-Aware Car to locate and avoid the masses of crazy old drivers in Aware Cars careening all over the highways.
Dark times lay ahead pedestrians everywhere.
A lady walks into a bar with a bulldog on a leash. The bartender says, "hey! You can't bring that ugly, flea-ridden thing in here!"
The lady says, "How dare you talk about my dog that way!"
The bartender says, "I was talking to the dog!"
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Agnes heard on the radio a traffic report about a car going the wrong way down highway 69 causing accidents left and right. Alarmed because that is the route her husband Howard takes every morning, she calls him on the cell phone to warn him.
"Howard! Please be careful, honey. The radio is reporting that some maniac is driving the wrong way down route 69!"
To which an exasperated Howard replies, "One maniac!?? There's dozens of them!"
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Yeah, you get in the way of all of us Michael Schumacher wannabe, lane-changing, bumper-following, cellphone-using, donut-eating, coffee-drinking, radio station-changing, makeup-applying, hair-combing, computer-using drivers who are *far* more aware of what's going around us than you are.
Medicate Me Elmo!
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Sure, not all of them. Just the ones that act like it. If someone wants to act like a child, then they can be treated like a child, whereas if they want to act like an adult, I am more than happy to treat them like one - and in both cases, this is regardless of age.
Thank you, I 'preciate that. You, however, are not typical.
When you were 8 you went to school and took sports/violin/whatever because your teachers/parents wanted you to, not because you wanted to. You will find as you grow older that most people start treating you in that manner again. In controled care situations like nursing home they treat pretty much every resident that way. You will get a teddy bear pill reminder because that is what they want you to have.
In the meantime a targeted rant now and again may be just the whack upside the head the people who will be marketing things to me and the people who will be caring for me need to remind that, like bad generals, they are thinking about the last generation when "solving" the problems of this generation, even though they may well be deluding themselves that they are thinking of this one.
Are you really going to go on a tirade and start knocking over shelves if they put the pill reminder teddy bears on the shelf next to your normal pill reminder?
I'm not a two year old. I don't go on tirades. I'm a curmudgeon. I post rants. In RL they come off as Billy Connelly type comedy routines and people laugh.
KFG
Just a switch on the floor of the passenger side and a beeper operable by said switch. Place spouse in passenger seat and drive somewhat faster than s/he would like. Voila!
*pauses*
What was I suposed to use this for?
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Well, I don't think that those people are reading slashdot, and of those who are, they are probably going to ignore you and cite some study that says old people react well to stuffed animals.
It doesn't stop Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
. . .they are probably going to ignore you and cite some study that says old people react well to stuffed animals.
Exactly! They may well find, however, that the old people they are studying are not the old people they are marketing too, which is what they purport to be about. The old people they are studying are people born before WWII, not the people born after, whose money it is they are after.
They may well find their capital already gone when they figure out that we're looking to buy built in wireless for our GPS enabled, laser guided (with or without sharks) Aeron by Segway wheelchairs, not beeping teddy bears. The network in the nursing home better be secure as well, because if it ain't we're going to get in and have some fun.
Does it run Linux? Well, it does now! And now when I tell the android candy stripper, er, striper "Yeah, right. Blow me," she's going to interpret it as a command. Hey, Jim, what do you think about clustering our wheelchairs?
It's going to be a Brave New Nursing Home.
KFG