Tag technology

Those Darned Machines! Technology And The Elderly

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oldcell

Many elderly individuals are completely baffled by electronics devices like cell phones, DVR’s, and microwaves. My mom will stop using her microwave when the power goes out and the clock resets, even though I have told her numerous times that the function of the microwave is not affected by the clock’s function. I bought her a pre-paid cell phone (her very first cell phone, by the way) for her birthday in November, and am scratching my head trying to figure out why she won’t use it. She keeps it turned off during the day, then when I visit her, she complains that no one calls her on her new cell phone! I have made sure to tell her numerous times that there is no way that anyone can reach her on the cell phone if it is turned off.

There are times when I go to visit my mom when she asks me to help her dial numbers which I have already programmed into quick-dial. This is sort of pointless, since I prefer to use my phone to make those calls when I visit. I keep trying to encourage my mom to use her cell phone when I am not visiting, and honestly don’t know why she isn’t excited about having a means to communicate with her friends. I know that her macular degeneration is robbing her of her vision, and that her arthritis is so bad that it can be a challenge to hold things, but my mom exhibits a complete refusal to accept gadgets from the modern age, and has done so for as long as I can remember.

I remember when my mom got a Mac computer in 1991, and was so afraid to use it that she never turned it on. She would wait until I came over, then would ask me to turn it on and show her how to perform the same basic functions that I would show her every single time. When she got a VCR, she asked me to show her how to use it every single time she wanted to use it, despite the fact that I wrote down detailed instructions on an index card and taped them to the front of the VCR!

Recently I came across an interesting article, which was featured on theguardian.com and which discusses the difficulties which elderly folk have with modern technology. The original link can be found here: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2007/aug/21/technology.news

What I find totally fascinating is that there is research which backs the claim that frontal lobe changes and degeneration occur in the elderly, and that those changes render older people helpless and confused when it comes to figuring out how new tools and gadgets work.

Does that mean that younger generations will also exhibit the same confusion regarding new technology when they become much older? Are we all doomed to scratch our heads in confusion when the iPhone 35 comes out in thirty years?

Put Your Phone Down!

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o-TALKING-ON-CELL-PHONE-facebook-806x393

Please read my original post at:

http://xactmind.com/xc/articles/put-your-phone-down/

By: Dr. Stacey Naito – Physician and IFBB Pro

Cell phones are a necessary evil these days, but if you think about how much of your day you spend looking into a mobile device, you might realize that you have become overly dependent on it. Why is this such a bad thing? Well, for starters, our reliance on cellular technology makes us less productive and less attentive to tasks which we perform throughout the day. Whether you are cooking an omelet, driving to work, or drafting a letter, chances are that your cell phone is close by, and that every time it makes a notification sound, you stop what you are doing to attend to your phone, which draws attention away from what you should be focused on.

Cell phones are so distracting that scientists discovered that texting or engaging in conversation on a cell phone while walking can interfere with your ability to walk enough to cause accidents. This is because working memory and executive functioning are required during cell phone use, which distracts the user from the motor function of walking.

Another disturbing reality about our attachment to cell phones is the false sense of community we feel as a result of social media notifications and texts. The perception is that we are part of a vast network, but the ironic thing is that we tend to access our cell phones while alone. This isolation from actual interaction can actually trigger loneliness and depression. From the moment we wake up until we rest our heads to sleep, our cell phones are always on. They even serve as our alarm clocks now!

If you want to be more productive, leave your cell phone alone when you first wake up in the morning, and avoid using it while eating, driving, or performing other tasks. The messages and emails aren’t going anywhere, and neither are social media updates.

References:

Lamberg EM, Muratori LM. Cell phones change the way we talk. Gait Posture 2012 Apr:35(4):688-90.

How Technology Is Making Us Stupid

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cell-phone-driving-660-806x393

Please check out my original post at:

http://xactmind.com/xc/articles/how-technology-is-making-us-stupid/

By: Dr. Stacey Naito – Physician and IFBB Pro

Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) navigation has become one of modern society’s necessary evils, making printed maps such as Thomas Guides pretty worthless these days. People with a poor sense of direction consider GPS to be a godsend, but even people like me with strong directional skills have been grateful for GPS navigation. As a matter of fact, I can no longer imagine having a car without navigation built into it (thankfully, many car manufacturers are making this feature standard in some car models), and when I travel, I make good use of the navigation application on my smartphone.

However, GPS navigation threatens our ability to mentally map our surroundings, enough to make us quite blind to our surroundings. Basically, by getting comfortable with the convenience of GPS, we have become drones as we follow the directions on the screen, and the virtual roads become more imprinted in our memories than the actual terrain on which we have traveled. This means that we never fully experience the mental mapping that usually occurs when we are fully aware of our surroundings. In addition, if we make a wrong turn, GPS systems simply recalculate, so we never learn to re-map, and instead just follow the adjusted prompts.

According to neuroscientist Veronique Bohbot, not only does the convenience of GPS decrease one’s ability to adjust or improvise an alternate route, it results in a decrease in gray matter in the seat of spatial learning known as the hippocampus. Accordingly, people who practice mental mapping on a daily basis, like taxi drivers, have more gray matter in the hippocampus than those who are not regularly engaged in mental mapping.

The virtual world which a satellite navigation system relies on also robs us of the richness of experience which comes with pausing to notice our surroundings. We should pay more attention to the real world in front of us instead of allowing technology to turn us into idiots.

Go ahead and use GPS, but try to remain aware of your surroundings as you travel around. Your brain will benefit.

My Mom Gets Her First Cell Phone Today

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My mom’s 83rd birthday is today. She recently began asking for a personal phone line since the assisted living facility she resides at is very stingy about phone privileges. In response to her request, I plan to surprise her today with her own phone line. Instead of purchasing a land line, I thought it made more sense to get her a cell phone which had a large number pad, and was mobile so that she could make calls while she is in her wheelchair. It will be her very first cell phone!

Big Easy Plus Phone
Since my mom is pretty challenged when it comes to lots of technological bells and whistles, I opted for the Big Easy Plus Phone, with a prepaid cellular plan. She will get 800 minutes to start out with, which I honestly think will take her a while to burn through. I will help her with getting a list of the people she would be likely to call, and hopefully she will enjoy her birthday gift!

R.I.P. To My Palm PDA

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Palm Pilot

After relying on Palm and Palm Pilot PDA’s to organize my calendar for the past 14 years, I was forced to walk away from a deeply entrenched habit. Why? Because my most recent Palm finally gave up on me, and since I hadn’t been able to back it up this entire year, there was no point in holding onto what is now considered obsolete technology.

I received my first Palm PDA during my medical residency training, and was instructed to enter my patient clinic schedule on it, as well as anything hospital-related. My obsessive-compulsive need to be on top of my schedule all the time fell in love with the technology, so I continued to use the Palm after I completed my residency training.

I would regularly HotSync with my computer, safely backing up the data on the Palm. However, my Mac stopped supporting the sync software due to 2015 Mac operating system upgrades, and since my Windows 7 laptop didn’t support the Palm OS, I was pretty much screwed this year. I kept dreading dropping the Palm or somehow damaging it. What happened, though, was so weird. I had the Palm with me, and at one point when I had it on a tabletop, it beeped, turned on, then off. After that, I discovered that ALL of my data, my entire calendar as well as notes, were deleted. Thanks Mercury retrograde! I then spent about two hours on Google Calendar, trying to remember everything which was on my calendar. Not fun!

Over the years I have become completely accustomed to using the handwriting tablet on the Palm, and have considered the Palm a sort of security blanket. I loved not having to rely on an internet connection to access my schedule, and I loved having my calendar separate from my phone, especially since my phone has a horrible time holding a charge. Unfortunately, I have been forced to abandon my trusted Palm, and must now get used to using Google Calendar, then accessing it either on my Android, or on a tablet which I reluctantly purchased for the sole purpose of holding my schedule.

I am also ready to stop being teased about carrying a Palm around! For those of you who have engaged in the teasing, I just want you to know that I am updating my life with the tablet and Google Calendar. I know, it’s about time! But guess what? Palms are considered the predecessors to Smart Phones, so have a little respect for the technology! 🙂

I Don’t Know How I Feel About My Cell Phone

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s-l1000

My cell phone and I have a relationship which could best be described as “it’s complicated”. At times my cell phone will play this little game in which it won’t allow a call to go through on my vehicle’s Bluetooth, upon which I will stubbornly try the call again and again, finally giving up after about five tries. Once I reach the person I was trying to call (NOT using my car’s Bluetooth), the person will say, “Why did you call me so many times?”. Thanks, phone, for making me look like an idiot.

Another game which my cell phone has been playing with me lately is that it won’t focus on an object I need a macro shot of. This makes taking pictures of documents to send to people rather useless, since they can’t read the print on the document at all. This issue has become so irritating that I finally broke down and called Square Trade to initiate the second warranty replacement in the two years in which I have had an HTC One. I actually squeaked in two days before my warranty was about to expire, so I guess that’s a good thing.

The day after I called Square Trade about the camera issue, I lost my cell phone. That bastard of a phone hid between the passenger’s seat and the door, and though I would normally be frantic over the loss of my beloved phone, a feeling of complete defeat washed over me. I rely on that phone, and realize how ridiculously important it is to me. When I couldn’t find my phone, I felt completely cut off from the world. Honestly, it’s just a phone. Actually, wait a minute. It’s a handheld computer, external brain, scheduler, calculator, GPS device, Kindle, music player, camera, pocket graphic designer, etc. No wonder we lose our minds when we misplace or damage our phones!

Now that I have a warranty replacement, the task of transferring all the data from my old phone to the replacement phone falls on me, and I need to do it quickly. It takes HOURS for my carrier to transfer the over 7,000 contacts I have on my phone (I know, seems a bit much, but that’s what I have on my phone). Contacts, apps, images, etc. all need to be transferred over, and it will take forever. For all the convenience which technology affords us, it also can be a major pain in the neck!

The Case Of The Constantly Updating Phone

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HTC-One-Poetic-Borderline-case-wm-6

I have had an HTC One for a couple of years now, and have received one warranty replacement during that time. My phone has behaved fairly reliably recently, but it has gone through several complete systems updates, the last two of which occurred within one week. When my phone completely updated on May 19th, most of my settings completely changed, so I spent a couple of days trying to adjust. Then on May 25th, my phone went through another complete update, and all my settings changed dramatically AGAIN! AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH! Of course both of those updates apparently coincided with Mercury going retrograde, a planetary aspect which is notorious for messing up electronics.

I think I may go ballistic if my phone goes through another major update soon!

Has anyone else been experiencing numerous complete phone updates lately? I’m not talking about the software updates which come through regularly. I am referring to a complete system update and reboot which incapacitates the phone for about 15 minutes. During the last episode, I noticed that there were 386 updates made to my phone!

Some People Text TOO MUCH!

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I cannot believe how some people seem to be addicted to texting, to the exclusion of actually speaking to others in person (that’s because they’re too distracted by texting incessantly). Call me old school, but I much prefer having discussions via phone or in person chats than via text. One of the most annoying things for me is to be presented with a multi-part question requiring a lengthy response. If that text is followed up with a number of similarly epic-length scrolls, I will often resort to text responses such as, “too much to text” or “tell you when I see you”, because it is agonizing for me to text an interminable response.
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I have determined a few types of texting addicts by their tendencies and styles:

THE ADVICE SEEKER: This person is always asking for advice, whether it be on what movie to see, what job offer to take, or what name would be most suitable for his new dog. Some people I know will regularly ask for medical advice which generally irritates me, since I do not treat patients remotely. I just recently had someone ask me detailed questions about an upcoming surgery. It took almost a half hour of my time to respond to all the texts, whereas if we had just talked on the phone, we could have covered the same material in about 5 minutes.

THE TOLSTOY: This person enjoys writing lengthy essays which, on certain phones, will come in 4, 5, 6 segments, each of which is lengthy enough to make your eyes cross. Such texts may take the form of a synopsis of the entire day, or if it has been a while since the person has texted, may summarize the last few weeks or months. If that’s the case, brace yourself for an endless stream of these essays.

THE WORD ASSOCIATION TEXTER: The word association texter employs a style of texting which reads like random thoughts which are wholly unrelated to each other. It’s a hippy-dippy, stream of consciousness style which makes little sense at all.

THE LAZY TEXTER: The lazy texter may get into a rhythm and text quite a bit, but the texts are full of typos and require you to play a guessing game and translate the gibberish. “Going to the gym around 7 am” may end up looking more like “Goidn ti the gtm arudhb 7 am”. What bugs me is that certain people have no problem sending an endless stream of these massively misspelled texts. It seems lazy and sloppy, and it drives me nuts.

THE “LOL” TEXTER: This person is evidently quite happy when texting, because he or she uses “LOL” like it’s a part of normal conversation. You may even see humorless texts from this person with “LOL” appended to them. An example of an actual text I received from someone a couple of years ago is, “Oh wow, that sucks about your dad in the hospital and all LOL”. HOW IS THAT FUNNY?

THE ABBREVIATION TEXTER: This person abbreviates everything from TTYL to SMH, IDK, etc. I wonder if people who have a tendency to do this begin to forget the actual words behind the abbreviations? Hah!

THE EMOTICON TEXTER: This person loves using the emoticons which have become so ingrained in our culture. You can open up a text exchange with this person and see smiley faces and frown faces peppered throughout the entire record.

THE ANGRY TEXTER: This type of person likes to argue via text instead of hashing it out via phone or face to face contact. Usually such arguments are the result of misinterpreted texts and are best avoided by speaking on the phone with each other, but the angry texter opts to communicate via text.

THE “WHATCHA DOING?” TEXTER: This person’s texts can follow you around like a puppy dog, with “whatcha doing?”, and “what are you up to?” used quite a bit. If you text “at work, can’t text now”, you will encourage this person to then send about 15 text messages in a row, with things like, “yeah, it’s a drag being at work”, “what are you working on?”, “Do you have a really busy schedule today?”, etc.

I honestly think people should rely less on texting technology and return to communicating by voice on the phones they carry around with them.

Taking A Break From Your Phone

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Three-smartphones-using-F-007

Cell phone technology has become so advanced that we now carry handheld supercomputers with us wherever we go. What I do NOT like about this supposed convenience is that it has enslaved us to the gadgets. Between checking emails, texts, voicemail messages, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram via my phone on a daily basis, I have developed a rather hearty love-hate relationship with the thing. There is also a bit of a damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don’t curse which has pervaded my daily life. If I take my phone with me, I get bombarded, and if I leave my phone in the car or at home, I will invariably upset someone by not being readily available as a result.

I remember the good old days when people would call you at home, and if you weren’t available, they left a message which you could return at your convenience. In this instant feedback network we have created, we have become so accustomed to immediate responses that cell phones have become an immense distraction to the natural rhythm of life. In some sense we have sacrificed freedom for convenience, an ironic thing when you think about it. I remember getting my first cell phone and feeling so liberated because I no longer had to worry about people having difficulty getting in touch with me, and for some time it was incredibly convenient. Lately, however, I find myself constantly checking my phone’s buzzing or vibrating to see if the incoming communication is a Facebook email, a Yahoo! email, a text message, a voicemail message, a Tweet, etc. I see others doing the same thing, often to such an extent that they will ignore friends they are congregating with in order to check their phones.

I am very curious to know what all this technology and convenience is doing to our ability to take a break from the day and truly relax. My concern over this has resulted in a daily habit I have which is to put my cell phone on the charger when I come home, set the phone face down, and TAKE A BREAK from it. I am sure the rest of you could do the same without any negative effects. I have no intention of continuing to be encumbered by a Smartphone!

What Happened To A Good Old-Fashioned Phone Call?

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smartphonesThese days we walk around with cell phones that are technological marvels, a far cry from the behemoth units from the original mobile phone era. The term “SmartPhone” is an appropriate description for the most part, since Android phones rival the storage capabilities and functions of our laptop computers. We can do Google searches, map out a travel route, check our work schedules, update social media, listen to music, read books and watch movies and videos on our phones now. Residential land lines have become all but obsolete now. Another thing that has become fairly obsolete is the point and shoot camera. Cell phones have such high quality cameras now that there is no reason to have a separate dedicated camera.old-school-cell-phone

Because our phones can do so much, it is not uncommon to see people constantly distracted by their phones. I have actually seen people together at a restaurant, seated at a table, and looking at their phones without speaking to each other at all. I have also witnessed (and been guilty of same) people leave the table to use the restroom and look immediately at their phones, while their meal mates immediately look at their phones as well. Years ago such things would have been regarded as incredibly rude, but are to an extent part of the accepted norm now.

I have also noticed that many people will look at their phones right before going to sleep at night and right upon waking every morning. Whatever happened to looking over at your mate or spending time with your pets? Is your phone more precious than they are? A cell phone should never be the first thing to grab in the morning (though many people have resorted to using their cell phone alarms to wake them up in the mornings) or the last thing they look at in the evening. Cell phones have become a modern-day security blanket.texting on phone

Perhaps the one thing that frustrates me the most is that many people will engage in lengthy text exchanges. If there is a great deal to be said, especially if there is the exchange of a lot of information, or worse yet, a heated argument, it seems to me that speaking on the phone would be much easier and more considerate to the texting partner than continuing to engage in behavior that avoids inflection and a true connection with another human being. In addition, all that texting aggravates the thumbs so much that a medical condition called “Gamekeeper’s Thumb” should at this point be renamed “Texter’s Thumb”. Besides, how real are our communications with each other when we are so busy using abbreviations like “LOL”, “TY”,”OMG”, and emoticons like :-), 😦 and ;-P ?

Come on, guys! You might not remember that your cell phones are equipped to handle voice calls along with all the other nifty features that you allow yourself to get distracted by. Let’s not allow basic communication to break down as a result of being tethered to our cell phones. Girl on phone