{"id":1466,"date":"2016-06-22T07:50:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T11:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/2017\/09\/droneliness\/"},"modified":"2018-04-01T13:55:39","modified_gmt":"2018-04-01T17:55:39","slug":"droneliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2016\/06\/droneliness\/","title":{"rendered":"Droneliness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Concerned about an onslaught of enfeebled old people? Don\u2019t worry, robots will take care of them! American techno-optimism knows no bounds, and so-called \u201cage-independence\u201d technologies are proliferating like crazy. But in a profoundly ageist culture, the implications can be disturbing. Here\u2019s a critique, based on the latest article to catch my eye, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/12\/08\/science\/as-aging-population-grows-so-do-robotic-health-aides.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cAs Aging Population Grows, So Do Robotic Health Aides,<\/a>\u201d which appeared in the&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em>&nbsp;on December 4, 2015.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, population aging\u2014the prospect of many more of us living into our 80s and 90s\u2014does mean that people will require more assistance of various kinds. Technology can indeed help us address some of these challenges.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Challenge: limited mobility. Solution, according to the <em>Times <\/em>article: small, autonomous drones that will carry out household tasks, like reaching under a table to grab an object, fetching something from the other room and cleaning. This sounds nifty. Please, though, do not call mine a \u201cBibbidi Bobbidi Bot,\u201d as University of Illinois roboticist Naira Hovakimyan has dubbed the prototypes to make them less intimidating. I can handle \u201cdrone.\u201d Even people with severe Alzheimer\u2019s have been shown to react aggressively to infantilizing language.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Challenge: people with dementia, \u201cwandering.\u201d Solution: smart pendants that track location. That makes sense.<\/li>\n<li>Challenge: tracking health status. Solution: room and home sensors that presumably verify that you\u2019re up and around and have opened the fridge; devices with screens for video conferencing with health care providers. Those, too, make sense, and many more health-care-related technologies are in the works.<\/li>\n<li>Challenge: driving. Solution: \u201cDriver assistance [that] will turn cars into elder-care robots\u2026.\u201d This is a&nbsp;<em>great<\/em>&nbsp;freakin\u2019 idea. Google\u2019s driverless cars are safer than human-operated vehicles, and Americans who can\u2019t drive are hostage to lousy alternatives or homebound.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These benefits are real, but they\u2019re limited. Technology, as we should know by now, is no panacea for complex social problems. Looking for ways to profit from the fast-growing \u201csilver market,\u201d thousands of companies are pitching devices as a solution not only for mobility and wellness issues but to remediate loneliness and isolation. \u201cIn addition to smart-home sensors and mobile robots,\u201d the article continues, \u201cthere are a variety of other efforts to add stationary robots to provide everything from coaching to communications to companionship.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Communications, absolutely. Skype, Facetime and other web-based technologies are terrific ways to help people of all ages stay connected. Coaching, why not? Lots of learning involves the kinds of drills and repetition that machines are made for. I can envision some kind of gym droid making me stretch and sweat and work on my balance. I\u2019d name it and curse it and grow attached to it, and probably do the same for the drone carrying my shopping bag and the bot beating me at Boggle.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s not companionship. Facetime is not the same as being together. A robot is not the same as a friend. I\u2019m willing to bet that even people with advanced dementia can tell the difference, and I\u2019m not surprised by the response of a 91-year-old woman (quoted in the article) to \u201can Internet-connected tabletop robot with a round swiveling screen that portrays a friendly robotic face\u201d called Jibo. \u201cIf Jibo were my last friend,\u201d she said, \u201cI would be very depressed.\u201d Danger, Will Robinson, danger!<\/p>\n<p>As advertised, all these assistive technologies will help people stay in their own homes longer. That\u2019s a priority for many and a boon for the insurance industry, because aging in place is cheaper than institutionalization. But they are no remedy for the \u201cepidemic levels\u201d of loneliness that an executive at Brookdale Senior Living describes in the article. Just the opposite, in fact, because staying at home all too often means ending up alone.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sure, machines could be trained to do a great job. The presence of a sophisticated, infinitely patient robot designed to show pictures of your kids or play Scrabble or drive you to the movies might arguably be better than that of a human trained only to keep you safe, whose thoughts are likely on the faraway children her minimum wage supports. Those marvelous robots will inevitably serve the wealthiest consumers, however, widening the inequality gap and distracting us from the kinds of communitarian solutions that will help us all.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that many people end up lonely and isolated is not inherent to growing old. It reflects some regrettable\u2014and very American\u2014priorities:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We don\u2019t value caregiving, work largely performed by women who are unpaid or underpaid.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>We idealize self-reliance. This downplays life\u2019s challenges and shames us when, inevitably, we fall short.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>We value youth over age. Internalized ageism makes people reluctant to adopt technologies that might telegraph vulnerability. At the other end of the spectrum, technophiles embrace \u201canti-aging\u201d biotechnologies in the hopes of transcending senescence and even mortality. Neither the \u201cproblem\u201d nor the \u201csolution\u201d is technological. It is social.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Humans are social animals, and we\u2019re meant to live in community. Social connections give life meaning&nbsp;and are key to a happy and healthy old age. Instead of focusing on devices that reduce the need for human contact, why not make the most of our human resources? We already have something really good at looking after humans: other humans. Millions of people are out of work and a caregiver crisis is growing more acute.<\/p>\n<p>If we genuinely care about well-being in late life, we need to create opportunities for older people to come together with people of all ages, ways to get there, and meaningful activities to engage in, from the mundane to the metaphysical. Older members of society are uniquely qualified to be watchdogs, advocates, educators and futurists. Not to mention backwards-understanders; as Danish philosopher S<em>\u00f8<\/em>ren Kierkegaard observed, \u201cLife can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Our drones can come along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Concerned about an onslaught of enfeebled old people? Don\u2019t worry, robots will take care of them! American techno-optimism knows no bounds, and so-called \u201cage-independence\u201d technologies are proliferating like crazy. But in a profoundly ageist culture, the implications can be disturbing.<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2016\/06\/droneliness\/\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Droneliness<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\"> &#8250;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1466"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4038,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions\/4038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}