computers, broadband, and social networking

Non-Labor day – or is it?  We need some new ideas for how to continue to earn money past the age of 50 – the old ways aren’t working. The American economy added a net number of zero jobs in August. That is impressive as a net number, given that home care and home health care are the fastest growing job segments today. Fear about the future is driving folks to continue to work past their ‘expected’ retirement age. And people are living longer – a prospect that certainly makes ‘planning’ for the future a daunting experience in a good economy.  People are putting their money under the mattress, that is, if they still have some.  Yet every day I get a press release from an entrepreneur, a startup company that wants me to know that they are launching and targeting boomers and seniors. Are these startups in the net number of ‘zero jobs’ in August?  Are the traditional ways of counting workers, work, and non-farm payroll reflective of the continued ingenuity and idea creation that seems (from my vantage point) to be pervasive, targeting services and capabilities for older adults? Also, please note that the WSJ article about those who have lost jobs -- and note (which the WSJ did not notice) the jobs that several have found in the senior-related areas.

Will it take a tsunami to create a coherent vision of more successful aging?  It was a disaster. On March 11 of this year, one-third of the 16,000  Japanese tsunami deaths were among the 65+, no doubt embarrassing the citizens and government, who most likely believed they had done a good job of providing for an aging population. An article in The Gerontologist spells out why:  In 1989 the Japanese government developed a vision for long-term care, refined in 2000 with its own slogan "from care by family to care by society” complete with "policy to make home, community-based and institutional services a universal entitlement" based on physical and mental status regardless of family availability and economic status.

Were senior PCs reviewed in a column of the Wall Street Journal?  Sort of. Last week, Walt Mossberg wrote about the Telikin PC for Seniors, which was unusual. The tech columnist-turned-Apple enthusiast for the Wall Street Journal periodically writes about other new tech (between Apple product announcements). The Telikin, first launched at the October 2010 AARP Convention, is not exactly new. Bet from reading the Journal, you didn’t know that the average aged WSJ newspaper print subscriber is a 57-year-old baby boomer with an average income of $191K. Also note that half of all baby boomers have one living parent. So tech for seniors should be of interest to baby boomer Journal readers, as well as the affluent NY Times readers, who spend more than $800/year just to read the newspaper in print. Both groups still have parents, both groups can afford to buy them a device currently on the market if they’re willing. But since only 42% of the 65+ population are online, that still leaves a mere 14.8 million people 65+ with online access to nothing.

Radio days -- do big companies care about seniors? I’ve been doing some radio interviews lately and the same question is always asked – originating from skepticism or disbelief, I’m not sure: “Are large companies really interested in technology for older adults?” That is another way of asking, of course, do large tech companies see the senior market as relevant? I always reply by naming Microsoft, Intel, GE, Qualcomm, Verizon and Philips – of course they are interested and willing to say so publicly, even when their initiatives are relatively small departments or investments by very large companies. But with baby boomers turning 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day for the next 20 years, could the silent giants of the tech sector to acknowledge and segment a bit of the website? Search the sites of HP, Google, Apple, Motorola, Dell, IBM, and Nintendo. (And yes, I know about ‘TeachParentsTech.org’, a project done by a few Google employees in their company-provided spare time.)