

The future of old: If you’re 30 now, what can you expect at 80? - wallflower
http://boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/05/08/seniorland_circa_2050/?page=full

======
russell
The article succumbs to the fallacy of predicting the future from current
trends. To give you an example, here are some things that didnt exist 50 years
ago that were life and culture changing. Personal computers, the internet,
cell phones, most of the interstate, networking, cable, computer games, CDs,
personal electronics, google, twitter, medical imaging, nearly all heart
surgery, gene sequencing, financial oligopolies, media domination, civil
rights, gender equality, terrorism, airport searches. Missing predictions: AI,
flying cars, nuclear power too cheap to meter, fusion power, colonies on the
moon and mars and of course, flying cars.

My point is that 50 years from now is going to be way different from what we
imagine.

~~~
lkozma
To be fair, many things that exist today would have been considered AI back
then. Part of the problem with AI, as John Neumann observed it already is that
if you can formulate precisely enough what you want, you are already on the
way to solving it so it is a shifting definition to some extent.

Otherwise totally agree with your point, it's amazing how most science fiction
of the past missed things like the internet.

~~~
maratd
_To be fair, many things that exist today would have been considered AI back
then._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test>

------
alphaoverlord
Summary: Advances in medicine has increased the life expectancy of Americans.
As a greater proportion of people live longer, there will be stresses on our
economy and healthcare system and society's expectations/perceptions of the
elderly will change. We cannot predict the future, but much medical research
is being done and we hope that can address problems associated with aging.

No offense, but this article doesn't say anything insightful or novel about
aging other than rehashing what is relatively obvious.

~~~
tspiteri
_No offense, but this article doesn't say anything insightful or novel about
aging other than rehashing what is relatively obvious._

I find myself saying this quite a few times too. But sometimes I wonder, is it
because of such articles that these things are relatively obvious?

~~~
treeface
Perhaps to the uninitiated, but I think any reasonably-informed person can
keep up with at least the latest headline-grabbing advances in medicine. A
highly generalized technological vector, one could say, is not too difficult
to glean from the day-to-day news, but the distance between now and the
realization of any sort of major advance is always difficult to determine.

------
reasonattlm
You should expect that you have the opportunity, between now and 2061, to
meaningfully contribute to the development of rejuvenation biotechnology that
will be able to repair the biological causes of aging - to prevent frailty and
increased mortality in the old, and reverse those problems where they already
exist.

There are plenty of projects to support now:

<http://www.fightaging.org/take-action/>

And more will arise in the years ahead.

~~~
russell
Since I am a long ways past 30, I hope you guys get it done a lot sooner than
that.

~~~
Mz
It can already be done. I'm doing it now. I've had a hole in my left lung
close and decades-old scars itch like new ones and visibly shrink. I have less
gray hair than I had ten years ago. But a) you won't believe me and b) even if
you did, you would reject the things I have done to accomplish this.

My next amazing feat: Figure out how to shut up about this health stuff and do
something that actually makes money.

Peace.

Edit: I take it the downvotes suggest a few folks don't believe me. Please
enlighten me if this assumption is incorrect. Thank you.

~~~
jpulgarin
Elaborate.

~~~
Mz
I was bed-ridden for about 3.5 months the first part of 2001. In May 2001, I
was diagnosed with "atypical cystic fibrosis". After a lifetime of being
treating like a hypochondriac and months of being denied treatment while
doctors referred me for more testing and said things like "we can't find
anything physically wrong with you, would you like to speak with a
psychiatrist?", the first thing I was told after being diagnosed was "People
like you don't get well. Symptom management is the name of the game." In other
words, doctors were all too happy to consign me to a slow and torturous death.

Since doctors were not helping me and I had largely been on my own in dealing
with my health already, I continued working on the problem myself. I gradually
got healthier by throwing out all my worldly possessions in order to break the
cycle of contamination (this piece is heavily objected to by other folks who
are dying of cystic fibrosis) and I did enormous research into what
nutritional deficiencies I had, how to effectively treat them, and so on. I
made drastic dietary and lifestyle changes.

I have a diagnosis of a genetic disorder with a life expectancy of around 36
or 37. I will be 46 in one month. (I sometimes joke that 'in human terms, I'm
the equivalent of an octogenarian'.) People routinely think I am in my
thirties and I am healthier than I have ever been. I live without a car and me
and my oldest son (who has the same diagnosis) walked 8 miles both yesterday
and the day before to further the healing process. It isn't news that
exercise, eating right and so on can delay the aging process and is generally
good for one's health. Most people don't bother to explore the degree to which
that can now be leveraged with the vast amounts of information readily
available online.

Peace.

PS: There is a website, though that might die when my web-hosting expires
later this month (I'm broke and don't know how to pay for it). For now, it's
here: <http://healthgazelle.com/>

~~~
getsat
I sent you some money to cover your hosting for a while longer.

Since you're discussing medical issues, I'd use Google Keyword Tool to look up
exactly what people are searching for in relation to the topics you're
discussing. Use the most searched for phrases in the titles and bodies of your
posts.

Get a Twitter account for each blog you run and use one of the Wordpress
plugins that auto-tweets your new posts. Use appropriate hashtags.

You should also install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin on all your blogs. It
generates a robots.txt and sitemap.xml.gz which maps out all the content on
your site. This helps search engines find it all and index it properly.

~~~
Mz
Thanks.

------
benarent
I'm happy to see this article discussed on Hacker News, I joined a startup in
Jan, but before I was working as an Interaction Designer at the
<http://www.trilcentre.org> . Working at TRIL made me realise the fragility of
old age, I reviewed many ethnographic studies into the aging process. It made
me realize that even a small event could result in drastic ageing. For example
many fallers struggle to regain independence after even the smallest fall.
This can lead to social isolation, which has a knock on affect to cognitive
ability. All ageing research pillars are interlinked, if your interested you
can read about TRIL's here <http://www.trilcentre.org/tril-research/research-
themes.html>

I personally developed <http://jive.benarent.co.uk> | <http://www.bett.ie> , 2
years prior to the iPad launch.. and while I think the iPad is very
accessible, there is a lot of opportunity in apps and other services.

There is a huge opportunity for startups, Anyone here working in this area?

*Alzheimer and Dementia are the elephants in the room. At a recent conference the Alzermers presenter noted that the cost of Alzermers is more expensive than 'cancer'.

------
BasDirks
"Demographers predict that by 2030, average life expectancy will have climbed
past 80"

In most European (and a couple of Asian) countries, average life expectancy is
already above 80. Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators

------
kiba
I believe the future of old people will be old people rejuvenating to a
younger biological age, preferably when we're in our prime.

~~~
chc
That's not the foreseeable future, though. We don't even have any lines of
research that could plausibly lead to that end AFAIK. Greatly prolonging youth
(i.e. slowing age-related damage rather than actually reversing it) seems
likely to come much earlier, and even that is a ways off.

~~~
bradly
Actually testosterone and other hormone therapies are very effective at making
older people feel like they did in their prime.

~~~
chc
LSD is very effective at making people feel like they're purple clouds. Making
people feel good is not a bad thing, but it isn't the same as actually
changing their biological age.

------
wilschroter
I think the concept of a highly enabled, connected, and active senior class
has a lot more impact than people are considering. The points made about a
society that financially cannot retire are powerful because it forces us to
adapt a much longer view on our career objectives (which is always healthy).

------
undef
I'm about 30 and all I know of future is that I don't know.

But one thing I'm rather certain about: the world will be significantly poorer
in 50 years. And that I'll be totally dependent of my children, since it's
unlikely I'll ever see one cent of my pension.

~~~
tokenadult
_But one thing I'm rather certain about: the world will be significantly
poorer in 50 years._

That's the one thing I would most resolutely bet against among predictions
about the future fifty years from now. I've been hearing predictions of a
poorer world to come throughout my more than fifty years of life, and they
have consistently been proved wrong.

I may not have total buy-in to the views of the author I cite below,

[http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist-
how-...](http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist-how-
prosperity-evolves)

but he is on the right track about the long-term historical trend, which is
increasing worldwide prosperity. That's a trend I have observed in all the
countries I have lived in or visited, on two continents.

~~~
undef
We agree to disagree when it comes to mid-term, tens of years of development.
I'm just expecting current trends to continue for a couple of decades more,
until we solve ongoing energy crisis. I'm sure that occurs in less than 50
years; however at that point we'll probably still be rebuilding.

Long term looks good, when we're talking about over 100 years.

------
squidsoup
I think the only reasonable prediction we can make is that the world is going
to be even weirder in 50 years.

------
giardini
A catastrophic war. Possibly several if you're lucky enough to survive.

