I'm 51 and work in tech. I now understand the nuances in this article. I'll probably understand them better as time goes on.
Young readers probably skimmed over the bits about floaters in the eyes. Everyone older than 50 gets it.
Young readers probably skimmed over the bit about frequency definition, captions etc. Everyone older than 50 gets it.
I don't get the bit with walking sticks yet, but I am not there yet. But I realise that.
I was young and bulletproof once - even up until 5 years ago I didn't understand what this article was about. I gather by reading the comments here that most don't. The challenge is explaining ageing to anyone under the age of about 45, when it is entirely out of their scope of experience, in a demographic who think they know it all. Ageism is embedded in our society, whose best attempt at inclusion and diversity is based on colour of skin and gender. I don't think it will change, it has probably been the same for thousands of years.
I had to go around to a friend of my mothers the other day - in her 70's, her younger relatives had switched off captions on her Samsung TV. She had no idea how to turn them back on. It is hidden about four layers deep in the fu.king menus. Why isn't it a button an on/off button on the remote? Another button amongst the 20 already there? In the manual - It got a paragraph mention about 30 pages in, in a tiny font. So discriminatory. I am seriously thinking of making a career of this, while I still can!!!
There is also the 'no bullshit' attitude that starts to emerge when you turn 40. You want product to do a thing. Not to engage you in any way.
You either already have a life or you know you will never have one.
Many older people have money and they are willing to spend it if does a thing and it's easy to get.
If Amazon would buy Paul Graham's old Viaweb code, it would need just little updating to become a tool that generates killer UI's for the aging population in the developing world. Plain html5 with commons sense and good defaults with tiniest amount of javascript is all you need for a well functioning web service. Incidentally Hacker News is not far from this ideal.
Yup. Sure, I like to tinker with things sometimes.
But I don't, for example, particularly appreciate spending half a day yak shaving with a computer just to get it to the state where I can actually use it for the task I actually set out to do.
About a year ago, I decided I should have a working Windows computer for games and the occasional other Windowsy thing I want to do. My first thought was to upgrade one of my home-built systems. Instead I ended up just buying a big laptop on sale because I more or less to myself that I know how to build computers. But I don't especially want to in this case. I just want a relatively compact computer I can use for some specific tasks.
> Ageism is embedded in our society, whose best attempt at inclusion and diversity is based on colour of skin and gender. I don't think it will change, it has probably been the same for thousands of years.
Typically, societies are gerontocracies; the aged run the show. Sometimes it's formalized, usually it's not. It's only in the modern Western time and place that we have begun to prioritize youth. Even in the USA, the country which is famed for idolizing youth, the old are in power and are the primary voters.
Is it just me, or do TVs have the WORST user experience of all tech? Somehow, they can get away with it.
I've always wanted a consumer electronics brand that was known specifically for usability. For commodity tech, like TVs, radios, monitors, music, I don't want the most impressive specs -- I want a brand that means "we will be easier to use than the other brands".
Choosing between Panasonic, Sony, LG, etc etc.. it's all meaningless. Give me a BRAND that says "easy-to-use".
I honestly don't find TVs that hard to use--but then I don't try to use "Smart TV" features, which are indeed pretty bad across the board. I mostly just use a Chromecast--a much underappreciated device--and my tablet or laptop. Hopefully Google doesn't discontinue it when they get bored in a year or two.
Young readers probably skimmed over the bits about floaters in the eyes. Everyone older than 50 gets it.
Jordan Peterson claimed in an interview with Joe Rogan, that his meat only diet got rid of his visual floaters, and that they are an autoimmune problem.
I question how much they are autoimmune, but I've never noticed anyone talking about getting rid of them, deliberately or as a side effect, before.
Any other anecdotes out there about this kind of thing?
Young readers probably skimmed over the bits about floaters in the eyes. Everyone older than 50 gets it.
Young readers probably skimmed over the bit about frequency definition, captions etc. Everyone older than 50 gets it.
I don't get the bit with walking sticks yet, but I am not there yet. But I realise that.
I was young and bulletproof once - even up until 5 years ago I didn't understand what this article was about. I gather by reading the comments here that most don't. The challenge is explaining ageing to anyone under the age of about 45, when it is entirely out of their scope of experience, in a demographic who think they know it all. Ageism is embedded in our society, whose best attempt at inclusion and diversity is based on colour of skin and gender. I don't think it will change, it has probably been the same for thousands of years.
I had to go around to a friend of my mothers the other day - in her 70's, her younger relatives had switched off captions on her Samsung TV. She had no idea how to turn them back on. It is hidden about four layers deep in the fu.king menus. Why isn't it a button an on/off button on the remote? Another button amongst the 20 already there? In the manual - It got a paragraph mention about 30 pages in, in a tiny font. So discriminatory. I am seriously thinking of making a career of this, while I still can!!!