What software will you trust when you get senile?

My only silver lining is that she was too far gone to feel any of that frustration. She lived in a different world from the rest of us near the end.

I say this because your last sentence stuck with me in that context. I'd say it's even harder than acid, the fundamental precepts of how your brain functions have begun to break down, and my focus, at least with preparing myself philosophically for this path and in brainstorming assistive capabilities, is on ways to integrate tech "invisibly." Even the most basic things, better monitoring for incidents, the ability to detect the need for assisted care before it became urgent, mechanisms to bridge gaps caused by the loss of individual competence without requiring new skill sets and learning.

I was only a child when I was exposed to the bulk of this, so sincere apologies if any of the above seems to come from a weird point of view, I realize it can be a sensitive subject.

Lack of credit card? Maybe just carefully removing the cvv code from cards?

So, gradually, I've been building out a software architecture which I hope will be able to help. A simple text-based interface to start, some basic NLP, the ability to interface with a lot of different services. I want something familiar, with not too many dependencies (which is why it's not a web-based interface), that's forgiving of spelling and other errors.

Lack of a credit card helps greatly. That may or may not work for your father (I know in some countries it is hard to survive without one these days). The other potential way of doing it is to block the payment processors' DNS. Things like stripe, or the 3D secure site from Visa. Possibly someone has figure it out already.

I ended up blackholing the site via the router, just to be sure. She lost interest later that day.

Ten years ago your grandfather would have done what anyone without a GPS does -- he'd retrace his steps, or bring a map, or ask someone how to get home. But the problem now is that these things don't occur to him; his mind is no longer self sufficient; he's confused.

I think the only tech solution is for him to be able to speak aloud, "Take me home", and hopefully there's a device in his hand (or strapped to his arm) that understands his words and can tell him exactly what to do. Or it can send a message to a rescue team which comes to get him.

At some point in life, when your mind is no longer able to think rationally, I believe your digital assistant will have to take charge completely -- listening to your voice and telling you exactly what to do or calling help for you. Hoping to restore lost cognitive skills via the right kind of device or app is not a plan that scales well with a declining mind.

Clicking on a webbrowser and connecting to WiFi is not hard.

Still have to help people younger and older than me.

There are non user, user and user who actually know what they use.

Today's old people wrote the software your bank probably still relies on today. In ten years, you're going to be talking about me, one of the ones who saved you from Y2K, wrote software you have likely used (if you've used Windows or Visual Studio, you've used my bits), wrote mobile phone software you might be using even today, and you better hope I was having a good day when I wrote that routine controlling the programmable logic controller in the nuke plant down the road. So in ten years old people will magically be fluent in technology? No, no more than your nephew can help set up that network because he spends all day on Facebook. Techies have always been a subset of the population, always will be. But that doesn't mean the "normals" can't use what we produce. That also doesn't mean that "produce" has anything relation to "consume". I don't know the first thing about making a movie, but I do love watching one.

People drive cars without knowing what the Otto cycle is. People use microwaves without knowing how to use a compiler for the IMX6 chip driving it. People can use Facebook without knowing how to write a for loop in PHP. But it wasn't always this way. You used to have to know something about the Otto cycle to drive, or you'd burn the tops of your pistons off when you advanced the spark too much with the manual lever. You better know where in the compression cycle to start hand cranking the engine for maximum success (and minimal arm-breakage). But that's because (take your pick) the technology sucked, or simply wasn't ready for prime time. My wife and I were talking about why women didn't generally drive "back then". Manual transmissions, right? No, women drive stick just fine, ya pigs. But that's what I've heard. Reality: power steering. Anyone with a left leg and a right arm (and I have evidence that you don't even need the arm) can push a pedal and move a lever. But turning our '81 VW out of a tight parking space at low speed? Yeah, you better sack up and get a good grip on that steering wheel. Moving 4000 lbs. of steel around wasn't quite ready to be accessible to everyone.

My long-winded point is that old people will be fine with technology. But here's a tip for all you up-and-comers: make sure your product is not yet-another-thing-I-have-to-fuck-with. Old people don't get technology? No, old people have a low tolerance for yak shaving. Why did VCRs flash "12:00" back in the day? A sign of technological doltishness? No, it's a sign that first sentence in "how to set the clock" is, "grab a set of trimming shears..." Fuck it, it can just flash. Your device randomly needs a reset every X number of days because you outsourced the firmware development? Fuck it, back in the box it goes. You get the idea. I can barely remember to take my pills, and you're giving me something else that needs regular attention?

In my opinion, the ability to learn is one of the skills that is hit hard by dementia. The inability to string moments together and view them as a whole makes learning something new a real challenge and the longer it takes to do the thing, the more likely it is that it will simply be un-learnable.

But I suspect the mobility-impaired and the lonely-and-bored are more easily served than those with declining cognitive functions. Once people have reached the stage where they're starting to not recognise people or remember what year it is, [re]discovering a disembodied voice in their living room that sometimes answers questions intelligibly and/or does what they ask of it could be a bit disturbing. The UX problem is much harder than simply ensuring the service doesn't make buggy recommendations, and not an easy one to test.

Part of why we got it for her is because her eyesight is failing I thought it'd be easier for her to make calls by just saying someone's name. However Amazon makes it very hard for people that don't have cell phones— before you can make calls you have to type in a code that they'll send you in an SMS message. Since my grandma doesn't have a cell phone, only a landline, that wasn't doable. I had amazon text the code to my phone. She can call people via Alexa now, but the caller ID on their end shows up as my phone number instead of hers. It confuses the hell out of people she calls (including me, when I see that I'm getting a call from myself!)

I think older people who aren't fluent in the use of search engines also have a harder time making voice queries that the assistants can understand. She'll sometimes throw in extra information that isn't necessary for her question/command which throws off the results. Although it is adorable when she says "Good morning Alexa, would you please tell me what time it is?" instead of just "Alexa, what time is it?"

Unless there's a device specifically targeting the elderly and their priorities AND you're confident that that business model will survive for your lifetime, I couldn't recommend it. It's fine to have it be one of the ways you do things but don't put most of your eggs in that basket.

Talked to my dad today, it's been unplugged because my granddad is worried that satellites are taking his picture and showing it to him, and he doesn't dare use any voice commands.

Turns out it was a poor gift. I wonder what kind of creepy shit my kids' kids will try to pawn off on me.

I'm surprised the author didn't get into this question at all, they sort of touched on the app being an alternative to friends and family controlling your life, but if folks are helping you manager you affairs they'd need to be able to influence the app too.

For example, what if you need to start living in a new location afterwards? It makes sense that you would need to build trust with the app on your own ahead of time (or maybe just with apps in general), but folks helping manage your affairs will need access to do things like update your "fences"

To your point though -- there is a need for a technological solution. Friends and family should be helping make the decision "grandpa shouldn't being leaving this geofence between 8pm and 6am". After than, watching grandpa all night every night, trying to talk to him first when he starts wandering, having to find out and go find him when he does...these are all things where a technology solution CAN offer huge help and relief to the friends and family

My grandfather had Alzheimer's. We attended to him more and more as he got worse and worse. But one day, he went down to the basement while grandma was napping, and was doing something that involved a chunk of wood and a piece of pipe in a vise, heating it with a torch while beating on it with a hammer. Luckily, it just set off the smoke alarms and the fire department came. He could have burned the house down with him and grandma in it. That's what happens when you leave someone with Alzheimer's unsupervised for a few minutes.

If software can help when they aren't being actively supervised, I'm all for it.

It also opens up a different problem which software can also play a role in: non-intrusively monitoring the elderly person when the caregiver is away so the caregiver can ask relevant questions and take relevant steps to help.

I don't think it's reasonable for a person with dementia to schedule and manage their own care giving staff, there really needs to be a very competent person double checking their work and making sure they are doing their job adequately.

It would still be nice to have some impartial device tell you or confirm that what is going on, is actually going on.

I like to think that it makes everything a lot more interesting. Just like I like to think that, if I ever found myself falling through the atmosphere for some reason beyond my control, I would enjoy skydiving once before I die, since I would never jump out of a perfectly good plane. I'm sure I'm wrong in both cases, but I'm perfectly happy being an eternal optimist right now.