Service and a park that will help keep up the elderly with the tech developments
There should elderly homes, huge parks basically, that go back in time by having older technology. you could have a park per a decade as each decade is personified by certain technological wave. and the speed of change increases. 2020s will be the one where those parks should exist as the people who retire in their 60s were actually born in the 1960s. Which means that they could still keep up with the changes when they were in their 40s aka 2000s when we had our first iPhone. However, the (gadget) environment in the 20s will be so vastly different from that back then that this generation will be the first where you’ll have a relevant market share of people who won’t know how to use the new gadgets, mainly having to do with VR. That’s right — I’m not talking about an iPhone having hundreds of cool features that the people retiring won’t know how to use. That’s okay as long as the main features like calling and perhaps messaging is made simple enough so they could at least live the lives that they used to live before retiring — having the ability to call their grandchildren. This could be the minimum viable product for ‘going back in time’ parks like in Westworld. As the costs are low, due to there being cheaper 1990–2000s technology which costs less, and the fraction of people who have retired and who come out saying that they need help will dramatically increase. Especially if medicine and gene tech starts to raise our life expectancy. Not to mention their (grand)children wanting to visit them more as it’s a nostalgic trip where they can play games, watch shows and listen to music that is reminiscent of their childhoods. Some of the most awesome experiences of couple past years have been those experiences down memory lane.
Now, I don’t have the resourcefulness for a park, but I’ve been thinking for a while to start a company with a purpose to help the elderly cope with the changes. The reason why I share this is, because I don’t consider myself well-versed regarding the issue nor is it some holy-shit idea. It’s all about execution, which is why I’m at the same point as anyone who had the idea 10 seconds ago. Which is nowhere as the size of an idea is a couple neurons, amounting to nothing. By learning about them and laying the foundation by teaching the basic features of a touchscreen smartphone. Then, perhaps, as we know what their daily life looks like…we could go further by teaching them about certain apps. I would certainly love my dad, who has chosen a button phone over iPhone having tried it for 3 months, learn to use Spotify to listen to Led Zeppelin. He is always so surprised when I tell him that this thing literally has all the music in the world. The reason for such a service is because even though ideally their grandchildren teaching them the stuff, like I have tried to give my father lessons on Spotify, would give them a reason to spend time together…I feel we are moving towards a globalising world in a sense that rarely are we there live with our families anymore. Studying and working abroad as well as constantly travelling, the so-called nomad lifestyle, is becoming more alluring with each day. After all, life is short and as travelling cheapens we wish to see more. That’s at least my perspective on the matter, but I’m certainly not alone. I’m sure of that as studies show that Instagram account that (at least seemingly) change their locations for the photos making it seem like they’re constantly travelling get several times more likes in average. That’s all the proof I need for where society seems to guide itself towards.
There’s definitely much more to expand upon, but for now…For conclusion, this whole subject needs to be taken under a serious consideration as for the elderly the vast progress we’re making might either make them more lonely than ever as they feel cut off from the world that is building its own virtual environment. Even more cut off then it makes us technologically illuminated… from each other. At least we’ll always have a “place” to meet up with billion other people. Alternatively…as we enlighten our grandparents they will marvel at the gadgets that for them will soon be cutting edge enough to literally be “indistinguishable from magic”.
