games, fun and fitness

Two disruptive technologies now in one company -- Skype and Kinect.  Looking back at the past year of technologies that could make a difference in the lives of older adults, I have often thought that Skype and Kinect, not smartphones and tablets, might be the two most significant. Skype because it brings long distance families together (so many examples!) and Kinect because it enables an interaction without the limitations of a mouse, keyboard, or controller. Now both of these are Microsoft's -- and once they've figured out how to commercialize them, we can expect Microsoft, as they have throughout their history, to treat them like platforms for a broad ecosystem of willing partners to extend into new applications.  And therefore, there will be apps that make a difference in the lives of older adults.

When disruptive tech disrupts -- hindsight is 20-20.  Even famous executives like Michael Dell can be surprised by market change -- his comment about the rise of the tablet: "I didn't completely see that coming" made me wonder a bit about his marketing staff. But it was his remark about Android that made me pause: "if you look at 18 months ago, Android phones were like, "What is that?" And now there are more Android phones than iPhones." Consider this description from another WSJ article, which notes that "the handset logs calling data, messaging activity, search requests and online activities. Many smartphones also come equipped with sensors to record movements, sense its proximity to other people with phones, detect light levels, and take pictures or video. It usually also has a compass, a gyroscope and an accelerometer to sense rotation and direction." And Android phones support voice-activated search, e-mail response, and navigation. It would not be unreasonable to expect all smart phones to do all of these things, oh, maybe by next Thursday. And the following version may be quite usable. 

Boomers have turned senior, let 2011 and the games begin.  2011 kicked off reading one silly article after another about the 'first wave of baby boomers turning 65, woe is us', and the related gloom-and-doom set of books, including, but in no way limited to Shock of Gray (Fishman) and Never Say Die (Jacoby). But the year really began for me at CES in Las Vegas where I stood mesmerized in front of the technologically transcendent Bellagio fountain and oh yes, saw exhibits and vendors inside the convention halls, heard numerous speakers talk about the growing prevalence of mHealth -- all those iPhone apps, crazy -- and learned about new tech for chronic disease management, numerous smart phones (11), tablets (85), app stores (one for each hardware vendor?) and more. Really too much information to comprehend.