

A less lonely elderly - lenkendall
http://www.wwtid.com/2013/04/07/a-less-lonely-elderly/

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gruseom
Our society is deviant if not sick in the way that we push old people to the
side and avoid them instead of honoring them. It seems related to our worship
of youth and fear of death.

I remember hearing an interview with a Canadian researcher who went to Cuba to
study how they did something (I forget what, perhaps health care). While
visiting a seniors' centre, she saw a bunch of 10-12 year old kids playing
checkers with the old people in a common room. Later, she asked the director
how they had come up with so successful a program to pair kids with seniors.
"What program?" was the reply. "They just come in off the street."

Such a thing is unthinkable where I live. That says a lot.

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omegaworks
Cuba has more then a few things going for it - namely relative cultural and
linguistic homogeneity. My Spanish-speaking Mexican grandfather has a home in
a historically German suburban neighborhood full of English-speaking Polish
people.

There's just not a whole lot of context for community building. Interactions
happen only when they're necessary, meaning mostly to resolve some kind of
conflict, so there's rarely a positive context. People are just sort of
_averse_ to talking to each other and building any kind of neighborly
relationship.

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RK
I'm fortunate that I'm able to email and skype with my 90 year old
grandmother.

I do think it's interesting to see how this will play out with people who are
used to being online. My grandmother is probably able to function online at
the level she does because started on AOL 15+ years ago. Of course she still
uses an AOL email address. So in someways she's ahead of the tech curve, but
in others, she's quite behind. I'm sure this will be much the same story when
we are that age.

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rurounijones
Well that was a bit depressing to read.

I wonder how expensive it would be to make simple games that can be shown on
the "community" TV in old-folks homes with a hardware component that fosters
some discussions / interactions.

For example, a simple multiple-choice trivia program ("Which famous movie
started with the word 'Rosebud'" etc.) with simple remotes with 4 buttons that
they can use to play, like you find on airplane entertainment systems
sometimes.

Thinking about it the Wii would make the perfect platform for an "old folks
home" entertainment system, just needs the software.

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marquis
It's called Tuesday Night Bingo.

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rurounijones
Tuesday night bingo:

* Requires preparation and organisation each time.

* Requires people to actually run it.

* Is not done often (Once per week if we take your naming of it into account).

* Cannot be done whenever the residents feel like it

* Is one thing (Bingo)

To be blunt, your comment added nothing to the discussion so why bother
posting it.

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marquis
The question at hand is addressing loneliness: creating a computerized gaming
method for the elderly may be a nice thing to do, but Tuesday Night Bingo
creates a community event that can be looked forward to. So to add to your
comment, I can see some kind of computerized gaming method being made quite
interesting by adding in remote collaboration and guest MCs.

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circlefavshape
> Our society is deviant if not sick in the way that we push old people to the
> side and avoid them instead of honoring them.

The way the US treats old people isn't exemplary, but reading Jared Diamond's
"The world until yesterday" has kinda opened my eyes a bit - in some societies
old people are abandoned, or just killed outright

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woodchuck64
Imagine how much less lonely many elderly today could be with a cheap laptop,
skype and social networks. Is the pain of learning new technology really so
much greater than the pain of loneliness? Is there something else at work?

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Maven911
Not only that but there must be ways to monetize the upcoming baby boomer
generation that will be retiring en mass

