High-Tech Advances to Help Seniors: Scary or Reassuring?

For almost a year I've been writing about technological advances and inventions, including robots, that have been appearing in the headlines almost weekly, many of them touted as a boon to senior citizens who will need home care. By 2030 there will be 72.1 million Americans over the age of 65 -- nearly double today's number. The pool of caretakers will be woefully inadequate, hence the creation of robots like Cody, who is "gentle enough to bathe elderly patients" and Paro, who looks like a baby seal and has a calming effect on patients with dementia.

My comments about these high-tech breakthroughs have varied between alarm, ("Do you Want to End Your Days Talking to a Robot") and shock ("Now you can have sex with your computer!") to admiration for new gadgets -- for instance, accident-free cars smart enough to drive themselves and tiny wearable GPS systems that can keep track of wandering small children or elders with dementia.

The latest good technology I've learned about is something called "The Senior Network," currently available only in Israel, but planned to expand into other countries. Sponsored without cost by the JDC -- the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and Watchitoo, an Israeli-American video platform, "The Senior Network" is designed to bring together isolated elderly people to engage in seminars, which take place on a video platform in real time. Up to 25 participants can see each other and interact, although the size of classes is being limited to 12.

The program targets hard-to-reach populations and allows isolated elderly people in Israel to participate from their own home in social programming based on such topics as current events, religion, health promotion and music appreciation. Some of the classes to be offered for the spring semester include mathematical thinking games, grandparenting (expectations versus reality), positive communication and current events.

Dov Sugarman, the programming manager of the JDC says,"We're looking for engagement, not academics. Our real target is loneliness." He points out that elderly people who are lonely are 64 per cent more likely to develop dementia.

Here's one example of how the Senior Network has helped: Two and a half years ago, Rachel Zalmovich, then 70, suffered a stroke and lost her ability to speak. Bound to a wheelchair, she felt isolated, lonely and like she would never be herself again.

About six months after her stroke, Rachel was introduced to The Senior Network. At first, she was embarrassed about her impaired speech, but as time went by, she felt accepted by the other participants. She started forming relationships again. Soon she was connecting with people from 12 different cities in Israel, participating in discussions about history and politics and taking phototherapy courses. She felt alive again and her ability to speak was completely restored.

Rachel says the program empowered her. "You're not stupid even after you had your stroke". It also gave her a reason to get up in the morning, and a routine to follow. Each time Rachel joined a video session, she would put a flower in her hair to match her dress. Today, Rachel credits the program for her communication improvements. "Now I'm all over," she said. "My brain is ticking. I'm not stuck at home. I'm 72, and seventy is the platinum age."

In Israel the Senior Network service is free to seniors who want it. Someone will pay a site visit to the home to connect the computer to the Watchitoo video platform. Watchitoo was developed by Rony Zarom, a former Israeli paratrooper who created the technology so he could visit with his young son via video when he was traveling, and they could watch YouTube clips together. Watchitoo is now based in New York and combines HD video conferencing, streaming and multimedia collaboration on a Web browser platform. Yale University uses it for virtual classrooms and some TV networks use it for "after parties" following a TV show--so that viewers can discuss the program they just saw and ask questions of the stars.

Watchitoo and the Senior Network in Israel are just one of the ways I've learned that people around the world are creating new technology that will help in eldercare. Here are some more:

Lari Numminen, a young woman in London, has created a smartphone and tablet for senior called Zilta. She developed it for her own grandparents and now it's being used in 170 countries.

Lest you think that I've been lulled into believing that all the new technology gadgets are a boon to us seniors, let me return to my role as the Paul Revere of senior citizens, and alert you to something I read about in The New York Times' "Vows" column of January 26, 2014, "I Now Present Mr. and Mrs. Jetson."

It seems that a new fad is renting a robot ($325 a day) to attend a wedding when you can't be there, while you watch the proceedings through the robot's eyes from half the world away. Your rental robot can dance with other guests or even be the ring bearer in your place. The essay chronicled a number of robot-facilitated weddings, but it failed to address the inevitable question: If either the bride or the groom attends the wedding in absentia, using a robot as an avatar, then is the marriage legal?

Watch Out—The Robots Are Coming!

Paro, an interactive robot that calms people with dementia--Beck- Agence France Press

I have seen the future, and it is robots.

Because I am old and did not grow up gazing at electronic screens or playing with high-tech toys like I-pods and I-pads, I may be among the last to come to this realization-- that the human race is seriously threatened by the creation of ever more sophisticated robots.  But I want to warn my fellow senior citizens, those who still don’t know how to text or to hook an attachment onto an e-mail.

Last May I wrote a blog post called “Do You Want to End your Days Talking to a Robot?”    This was inspired by an article in The New York Times  detailing new kinds of robots being created to care for weak and confused old folks.  The robots included “Cody” who was “gentle enough to bathe elderly patients”, HERB who can fetch household objects, Hector, who reminds patients to take their medicines, Paro, who looks like a baby seal and calms patients with dementia, and PR2 who can blink, giggle and interact.  The article quoted a professor at MIT who said she was troubled when she saw a 76-year-old woman telling her life story to the baby seal robot.  I was troubled too.

My post elicited a number of e-mails from around the world describing devices which truly do improve elder care—the “Betty” tablet that caregivers use to inform each other and family members of a patient’s daily activities and condition, video games that increase cognitive ability, and devices—a wristwatch and something called Trax, which both use GPS, Wi-Fi and smart phones to track pets, children and demented elders who wander out of a pre-set digital area.

I began to think I was being paranoid about robots.  But I wasn’t.

As 2013 continued, Amazon announced that they were working on a delivery system that would fill the air with drones able to drop a package on your doorstep a half hour after you ordered something on line. This inspired a newspaper cartoon showing a discouraged Santa trying to sell his sled and reindeer while the sky overhead buzzed with package-carrying Amazon drones.

And we’ve all heard that in the near future we will have automobiles that drive themselves and are too smart to collide with each other.  That left me wondering—what if the self-driving car encounters an old-fashioned car, driven by an imperfect human, who is texting or adjusting the radio?

Delivery drones and self-driving cars don’t sound so bad, but then on Dec. 26, The New York Times told me that you can now have sex with your computer. 

The article, “’Interactive’ Gets a New Meaning” by Alex Hawgood,  began by describing the sex scene from the movie “Her” which stars Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore, an insecure, rather nerdy man who falls in love with Samantha—who is a voice in his computer—an app, I guess you’d call it.  She clearly resembles Siri, the female voice in my husband’s I-phone who can answer questions like “What is the population of Seattle” but gets evasive when you ask her things like “What is the meaning of life?”

But Samantha—the voice in “Her” is smarter than Siri because she is interactive--she can change and evolve to please Theodore.  According to the NYTimes, there is a sex scene in which  “after returning home from a failed blind date …it shows Theodore gently edging Samantha into arousal by telling her what he wishes to do to her body.  As things become increasingly explicit, the screen turns black, leaving the audience lingering in darkness as the characters reach their aural climax.”

That strikes me as very sad—falling in love with a computer app that has no body. 

The Times article goes on to list many computer sex toys already available—one, called “Real Touch” allows two people to have sex over the internet, no matter how physically far apart they are.  Designed by a former NASA engineer, “It comes in two parts, one modeled after a woman’s lower anatomy and one modeled after a man’s.”

There is a list of interactive computer sex toys already on the market, some meant for two people to use, some to use on your own.  A report by a trend-forecasting firm in New York, according to The Times, “makes the case that forward leaps in augmented intelligence and video-game interactivity will let people ‘get attached to and develop real relationships with their hardware and software.’”

But can they take them to the office Christmas party?

LovePlus, a dating simulation game for the portable Nintendo DS console, “allows a player to caress another’s hair using a touch pad…these virtual sweethearts modify their personas in real time based on the player’s likes and dislikes.”

So you don’t have to spend time and money searching for Mr. or Ms. Right—you can create and train one all by yourself.

And on December  29, on the front page of The New York Times, there was the scariest article yet, titled “Brainlike Computers, Learning from Experience” by John Markoff.   Here’s the first sentence:  “Computers have entered the age when they are able to learn from their own mistakes, a development that is about to turn the digital world on its head.”

In 2014, according to the article, a new kind of computer chip is scheduled to be released that can learn from its errors to evolve and increase its skill at a task.  This computer is based on the biological nervous system.  This will create a new generation of artificial intelligences that can “see, speak, listen, navigate, manipulate and control. That can hold enormous consequences for tasks like facial and speech recognition, navigation and planning.”

The article went on to elaborate on how this works, using words like “algorithm” , “neural network” and “biological synapses” which cause my aging eyes to glaze over, but while the explanation is over my head, I’ve seen enough science fiction movies to know what happens after computers and robots  can imitate and even improve on the functions of the human brain and body.  Which is why I’ve concluded that in 2014, in addition to worrying about global warming, our environmental footstep and terrorism, we should also watch out for the new generation of  robots that is being born.