I agree with most of your post. This particular part, though, about "take it or leave it" works only for anyone's individual choice of how to spend their free time.

But some parts of life demand electronic communication. As OP pointed out, though, that is is becoming increasingly difficult to simply "leave it" when the systems are designed to make it essential to do things electronically. Slowly but surely, any person who doesn't have those skills automatically either becomes dependent on a more skilled person, or gets left behind or has to go without.

In rare acts of small defiance, they may still be able to take their business elsewhere, and sometimes that causes a smile, as it did when I saw a grandmother and her teenage daughter leave a restaurant because the menu could be accessed only via a QR code. It was not the grandmother but the teenager who protested, telling the manager: "We left our phones in my grandmother's flat so that we could talk without being interrupted, and came here because it looked cosy from the outside. Now your waitress refuses to tell us what you sell. So we're leaving to go and spend our money elsewhere."

Reminds me of those little old fashioned restaurants you still get in small villages in Spain, where in all those years they never got around to making a printed menu - or maybe it's because it changes every day depending on what the chef could get on the market. So the waiter will rattle off the menu, and you'd better be paying attention because it's embarrassing to ask him to repeat. Alternatively, if the place is a little more up-market, he will bring a chalkboard with the choices written on it and hold it up for you to read, and in between he'll wipe stuff out as it sells out.

But printed menus or no, and QR code or no, a waiter who doesn't actually know whats on the menu (or refuses to say) is in the wrong job IMHO.

Deleting my Facebook account (years ago) is one of the best things I have ever done for myself. I really came to realize how much time I was wasting on there once I stopped using it. My brain also felt so much less "cluttered" and I just felt so much more at peace in general. Honestly, someone couldn't even pay me to go back to it now -- just knowing how much happier and more content I feel without it.

I think sites like that have a way of making people feel like they need them, but once you stop using them, you realize that you really don't need them at all. I now keep in touch only with my real / close friends via email, and I find the communication is so much better and more meaningful.

Anyways, sorry to go off topic a bit.

This is an interesting subject, though... It makes me wonder what technology will be like when I'm in my 70s or 80s and if I will be able to keep up with it. I feel like I barely am able to do that now. I'm lucky if I can get my Cumulus card to scan correctly.

I haven't deleted my facebook account but I feel it's sort of killing itself.

It started off with a small group of friends and we exchanged all the gossip and banter. Then the circle grew. Aunts and great uncles divorced wives of second cousins and that guy who was in my class at nursery school and whose name somehow stuck but who I no longer have anything in common with. Or people I've never met but who I corresponded with or share hobbies with. And the estate agent who sold my parents' house etc etc. Eventually I was up to about 700 friends. This meant my stream was completely cluttered with stuff that didn't interest me, some of it in languages I didn't even speak. Like Polish, Serbian and Indonesian. And most of the people replying to these posts were people who were not even Facebook friends and there was just no point in reading it. And I was being bombarded with petitions to sign over things I didn't know anything about. Such as calling for a police deputy in some place in Indonesia to step down. So I just naturally spent less and less time there because the appeal just wasn't there any more.

I know exactly what you mean -- how that friends list can so easily grow out of control and make that place feel unmanageable. What you wrote also reminds me of something kind of funny that I once read. It was an article where people listed their reasons for deleting their FB accounts, and one guy wrote:

"I realized I was staring at a photo of a croissant that my co-worker from 10 years ago was having for breakfast. That's not how I want to spend my time."

lol.

Having read this far I’m feeling quite ok knowing I never joined FB. I have an IG account which has had increasingly sporadic use over the last 2 years - the awareness of being lured in is enough to not open particular apps (having a phone with insufficient GB storage space for ‘21 life anotheras I can’t install all updates)

I am determined to keep up with the times in terms of current discussions that focus on identity politics (what doesn’t these days) and general societal thought progression, however often find pulling a yet-to-be-read book from my stack casts me out on a more satisfactory, provoking and further ranging thought process

I joined Facebook some years ago in response to a request from two of my much younger cousins. They wanted to share photos with me. I made an account with very minimum details and looked at the photos and that was it. Some years later I needed to contact them and no other media worked. Someone suggested that as they were young girls they would be bound to check their Facebook so I could send them a message via that. I painstakingly logged in to find that they had "unbefriended" me (or whatever the terminology is) sone years previously due to my inactivity and that I had the sum total of 0 friends on Facebook. I am rather proud of that!

People who read stuff that they imagine while reading (5x a week, 30min minimum) live cca 2 years longer than others. Non-fiction, papers, journals do not count. Can't remember at what conference I picked it up, if anyone needs a source. But one can feel the theory work - stories take your brain "for a walk".

We should rehash the Writing Thread....Who was it? Lib? To make EFers instantly younger.

Don't you just mean "People who read fiction..."

I think realizing that they are only after selling your habits, data and predictions - makes it clear that it is only a business. Easier to not even fall for it. How people use it and why is yet another problem.

That said - getting grandma a smartphone and helpin' her set up the communication channels (for whatever - doing yoga online, talking to grandkids, sending recipes, getting discounts) is actually a really good thing for their cognitive health.

Those who'd be forgotten by the careless society, would be anyways. But family and friends reaching out to elderly and helping out with stuff is a fact, it happens. Maybe it is not obvious but it exists. Covid lockdowns made it even more pertinent. Lots of people had a chance to say their last goodbyes thanks to technology, made them less lonely. We had Sunday lunches with family, even if it was only online.

There are courses to up IT knowledge for seniors, in CH more than elsewhere. I also know people, who do it as volunteers or ask for little. Municipalities are aware here and companies offer help with downloads and installations. We have free courses at work, too.

Times change, we all need to adapt but we also need to change the ways we help other people to adapt and not forget them, not let them fall through the cracks and into isolation. Good thread, OP.

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"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

No. Poetry has the same effect.

People can choose to self delete on any number of social media platforms when the environment becomes too dissonant. Even EF, as we’ve seen in recent months. It just depends. I rely on my FB to keep up with friends in the US and elsewhere, family, people I met online when I had breast cancer, carers of geriatric dogs and the occasional political nonsense. My FB friends list is small. I believe that if you can control these platforms to some extent, you can have some useful interactions. Twitter is a bit noisier and I’ve moved away from it. Of course it’s all just a business. Every social media platform that derives some form of profit from users, subscriptions, clicks, what ever is a business.

Of course nothing can be controlled completely, can it? And there are idiots and undesirables everywhere.

Reading something that you can imagine….interesting thought…I can’t read without it. But if non fiction doesn’t count does that apply to history in the same way? Sometimes people visualize treatments for things like cancer in their imagination….like Pac-Man, or similar. Does that count?

That's actually one of the more difficult things to do on line. They intentionally make it difficult.

When I want to do this I first search (Not Google) for "How to cancel from ..." They I can usually do it. Otherwise, rocket scientist required!

It didn't. I think there was data/data-free ratio. So an imaginable story line or feelings created more new visuals. More baby neurons. Not recycling technical stuff..Made me change my reading menu to actively pull away from packs of concrete info at least a bit.

I'd have more problem with how reliable the research was when you have to take into account whole life spans, unreliable self reporting, etc. And how different the stuff we read was 50 years ago, the genres really mix more now I think.

I bet jokes make us younger.



If older generation does something better and more than us, it's deffinitely reading. Thanks, Tasebo.

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"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

Too bad, it’s intriguing, but if research is done poorly then that’s an issue. But I’d argue that imagining history is not technical. I read Marie Curie’s biography written by her daughter years ago and have vivid memories of her lab experiences as described. Enormous piles of pitchblende, radium glowing, cold damp labs, etc. Likewise, a non technical patient receiving chemo, for example, thinking of the meds destroying cancer cells can be very non technical and imaginative. But maybe not…..

Perhaps they don’t use associative pathways anymore, but stories that generate images in imagination would seem to generate new associations.

And yes, anything that makes you laugh is good.

I guess I’m grateful to be in the generation that straddled the creation of computers and moved between reading and online life. You know what that means…..boomer!

Well, commies kids were boomers by default.

Coincidentally, I listened to a dramatization of Currie's couple's & scientific life, from '81 a few days back. I think audio books have similar movie/visual effect, probably lesser though.

We cry for oldies being forgotten in digital era, while I think we should also cry for kids that nobody reads stories to when their brains develops the most. A tablet is a poor compensation.

I think associative pathways are all good, but it's the type of info that brain works with before you notice/are aware that makes the difference in terms of hemispheres cooperating - if you visualize meds killing cancer cells you probably want to. The level of visualization really is personal, which means for some history wil be a mix of fiction and non-fiction aspect, for other hard data. I see history, too, thoughts, feelings, patterns, paradigms, algorithms. I wish I saw math this way.

UK has this simple speak type of official documents and technology for elderly or whoever needs simple terms. I saw it here too. I think if manuals or protocols were written in stories, it would help better.

Czech lit anthologies are horrendously dated (old lit and medieval) and hard to relate to for kids, plus kids are obligated to read cca 5x -8x more than here but the system insists for other benefits. Imagination, historical context, reading fluency, cognition.

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"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

I will be forever grateful to my one aunt who read to me constantly when I was a toddler. Reading to kids is so important to facilitate reading and so many development issues as you suggest. I don’t know if there are volunteer opportunities for that here…

I think it is a fab idea, you could arrange it yourself I think, through libraries probably or foster institutions. This will probably require fluent local language or you could read to an Anglophone kid. I'd write a letter to the lical children's library and foster houses.

I was read ton as well too, the best were really old fairy tales since they were scary and gloak and then in Slovakian - about a housewife who shrank to tea-spoon size when she needed and did all sorts of missions.



Being read in a foreign language is fab, I never really thought about the fact that I watched SK news and read all volumes of French medieval romance Angelique in Slovakian when I was small probably thanks to mom reinacting tea-spoon size Ženička every night.

There is a lot that oldies can offer for some IT/technology tutoring - reading, stories, repairs, needlecraft...recipes.

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"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

Which is why power of attorney can be very useful. My Grandmother handed power of attorney to my mother and aunt (with my mother having the casting vote), when she was about 85. She just didn't want to be bothered with it any more.

My parents will do the same when they reach a certain age. They've already done it if there's only one of them left, and they become non-compos mentis.

At the moment our plan is to eventually buy a mulitgenerational house with my son and his wife. She grew up like that, so for her it's natural.

Regarding smart phones, my mother got one specially suitable for non-techies. Once she was comfortable with that, she shifted to a proper smartphone. My wife's parents use an Android tablet for Whatsapp to keep in touch with the family. I set it up for them.

Despite the fact that all four parents are in their 80s, they're fairly tech savvy. Though they ask for help when they're not sure.

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Down with racism. Long live miscegenation!

The power of attorney has to specifically state that it continues after death as normally it would ends with death. This was the standard wording for Swiss Banks 25 years ago. However I understand they can be reluctant to accept instructions if there is a risk of someone with forced inheritance could be being taken advantage of.