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Futuristic Suit Lets You Feel What It's Like To Be An Old Man
HughPickens.com writes: Andy Newman writes at the New York Times about an exhibit at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City that lets users walk a proverbial mile in their elders' orthopedic shoes and experience the stooped shuffle, the halting speech, and the dimming senses of an 85-year old man. It is not a very pleasant experience. An attendant cranks up a fader and your vision dissolves into melty, grayed-out blobs, like a memorably unvivid psychedelic experience, more knobs twiddle, and your hearing is subsumed in a fog of tinnitus, muffling and distortion. Loaded with hardware and a computer, the suit itself weighs 40 pounds, distributed as uncomfortably as possible. "It's going to get much worse," promises Bran Ferren, the suit's inventor. "You haven't lived."
According to Newman, in just 10 minutes, the aging suit induced a remarkable amount of frustration, depression and hopelessness. There are entire realms of wretchedness attendant upon owning and operating an 85-year-old body that the exhibit does not even touch upon. Comprehensive sagging, internal and external. Pain in places you did not know could hurt. Difficulty urinating. Difficulty not urinating. Watching your friends die off. Watching yourself become irrelevant, an object of pity or puzzlement if acknowledged at all. By allowing a younger generation to feel the effects of aging firsthand, the suit provides a newfound perspective that hopefully inspires a conversation with loved ones about getting older so, collectively, family and friends can better prepare for the future. If doing even the most basic tasks of daily living is this much trouble, you wonder, why bother? But it also makes you a little less likely to lose patience and a little more likely to feel empathy with the older people in your life. "My father, Aaron Newman, happens to be 85," says Newman. "I called him up. I described the treadmill experience and asked if that sounded about right." "No," he said. "It's much worse."
According to Newman, in just 10 minutes, the aging suit induced a remarkable amount of frustration, depression and hopelessness. There are entire realms of wretchedness attendant upon owning and operating an 85-year-old body that the exhibit does not even touch upon. Comprehensive sagging, internal and external. Pain in places you did not know could hurt. Difficulty urinating. Difficulty not urinating. Watching your friends die off. Watching yourself become irrelevant, an object of pity or puzzlement if acknowledged at all. By allowing a younger generation to feel the effects of aging firsthand, the suit provides a newfound perspective that hopefully inspires a conversation with loved ones about getting older so, collectively, family and friends can better prepare for the future. If doing even the most basic tasks of daily living is this much trouble, you wonder, why bother? But it also makes you a little less likely to lose patience and a little more likely to feel empathy with the older people in your life. "My father, Aaron Newman, happens to be 85," says Newman. "I called him up. I described the treadmill experience and asked if that sounded about right." "No," he said. "It's much worse."
This is news? I know there's always this delusional part of the population that says they feel better at 40 than at 20, but they're idiots.
Aging should be studied, understood, controlled and eventually reversed.
Fuck aging. There's nothing glorious about grey hair, bald spots, high blood pressure, failing memory, decreasing processing power, declining physical capabilities, and for the money-hungry among us, the extra cost on society of old, feeble, decrepit bodies.
Why there isn't the same level of excitement for anti-aging, as, say, colonizing Mars, is very difficult to understand.
Remember the old farts you make fun of? The only thing that separates you from them is time.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Bullshit.
Not bullshit that he did it, bullshit that just anyone could. You've got to have the right combination of genetics to make it to 82 in the first place, not everybody has that.
And almost nobody has the ability to set a record. That's why it's a record, not the standard.
It takes a combination of effort and luck. Without both, you're screwed.
How about a suit that lets old people feel like to be young again?
Now *THAT* there'd be a real market for.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Old age, as my almost 90 dad says, "sure beats the alternative".
I don't mind my failing body and mind so far. For me, it's not about the car, it's about the trip.
I've seen some cool things happen over the years, and I want to see more.
I wonder what it was like for my grandparents to see all this. They were born in the 1800's and lasted until the 1970's
No cars, no radio, no airplanes, no refrigerators, no air conditioning, no electric lights, no telephone. Only the well to do had heat other than a fire in a box.
My grandmothers could not legally vote when they were young women.
Can you imagine how cool it was to see all that come into life?
As for me, I was 6 years old the first time I saw a television. I still think it's cool in so many ways.
I was a teenager when I saw a computer in use for the first time. I believe it was a GE 200 series.
At about that time, the USA had more nuclear weapons than computers.
There were no satellites yet.
I basically saw the entire space program unfold from start to present. Except when sputnik was launched; I don't recall the actual event. I remember people talking about it later.
Everyone in the neighborhood (suburbian) went outside at night to watch Echo 1 pass overhead. Street lights were still a rarity outside the central city areas. We could see the milky way any clear night, so spotting satellites wasn't hard.
I saw the first man step onto the moon live on TV.
I saw the Berlin wall come down and the Soviet Union collapse. ... well, we'll see what happens.
We're seeing China transform from an anthill slave society into
I grew up in the totally segregated south and saw the civil rights movement happen, and I saw how much individual people can change.
Humanity, when it's working right, is amazing.
The most recent doctor that treated me in the hospital is a black woman. Inconceivable in the 1950's in the South, or come to think of it, pretty much anywhere in the USA.
I remember a 1950's science fiction story where everyone was telepathic. Knowing everyone else's thoughts all the time was a living nightmare.
Thanks to Facebook, texting, etc, we nearly have that now.
I really don't mind so much that I can no longer sleep on one side because it hurts too much to sleep, or that I cannot plan when to go to the bathroom, or that I need the subtitles turned on to understand British television...
There are so many interesting things happening, and thanks to growing up in the 20th century, the whole terrorism thing is, well, shrug, so what, to me.
I'm betting on something like CRISPR/cas9 to be the next "who knew we could do that?" technology. This is going to be way cool.
I'm hoping to see mosquitoes extinct, or at least the ones attracted to humans.
There was a 1958 movie "The Long Hot Summer". It had Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Orson Wells, etc.
If you saw it, you'll remember the closing lines from Will Varner standing in front of his burning barn.
It's like that.
Any web designer who ever uses light gray text on a slightly darker gray background or a font less than 10 pt should be forced to wear the vision fader for a month at least.
Only if you're unhealthy. I am 40 years old, I eat well and I have an active life. My stomach is flat and muscular.
That's what is wrong with this "old man suit". It's simulating being an unhealthy old man. There are plenty of 85 year olds out there who are still strong and have a lot of pep. It's all a matter of how well you treat your body. If you consume fast food/processed food/junk food/candy/soda/alcohol/tobacco and/or sit around in front of a TV or computer doing nothing all day, of course you're going to be fat, weak and unhealthy. It will also lead to other problems like deterioration of eyesight, poor posture, vitamin D deficiency, digestive tract issues and various aches and pains. On top of that, you'll miss out on so much by being sedentary. There is a whole world to see and explore.