It’s a puzzlement – finding the organizations trying to get older adults online. Last June I wrote a post about getting older adults online – in particular, the age range from 75 and beyond – only 34% of those folks were online at that time. Yet so many organizations offer online assistance in coping with a variety of concerns of older adults, whether it is taxpayer assistance, help with online banking, obtaining coupons for grocery savings, even a Geek Squad coupon from AARP -- and it is, naturally, available online! -- to help with problems that older adults might have using computers. Duh. And a new campaign, Everyone On, has produced Connect2Compete, a public-private partnership that has been launched to help low-income individuals cross the digital divide – but only if they have a child on the ‘federal free and reduced-cost lunch programs.'
Aging in Chicago – a confluence of committed professionals. Another year older, and again, Aging in America is over. Large non-profits, social services staffs, senior center leaders, nurses, senior housing execs, health insurance companies, councils on aging -- not to mention a gaggle of consultants and experts -- were there. More than 700 sessions were listed, visions for a better aging life were communicated, networking was had, training was held and CEUs were obtained. All of these laudable folk are in professions that are committed to helping older adults – in fact, many of them were clearly older adults themselves – people who serve, but may also need services. We heard visions of retirement reinvented to last 30 more years and new research identifying criteria for evaluating a city’s livability for older adults. And much more, a lot of it CEU-eligible. But did attendees learn anything new?
The Chinese military wants to get inside the Times and your devices. Never mind the NY Times – for your own good, don’t open that PDF. A wide variety of hackers want access to our individual computers, tablets, and phones – even Apple and Facebook are not immune. We walk into an office products or computer store and our enthusiasm for the latest gadget is limitless -- they must be fast enough to view video or to surf bloated websites. So we watch a demo and walk out of the store hundreds of dollars lighter. If the sales rep doesn’t tell us what to buy (extra set-up, patches and updates, virus protection software) and we don’t know any better, we arrive home with our virus-ready, hacker-friendly technology, all set to make us look like idiots to our contacts and colleagues as we send fake emails and phony porn links.
