Greetings from the Alexa Club!

Carlsbad By The Sea Resident Takes "Alexa" for a Test Run

By Corinne Sawyer, resident at Carlsbad By The Sea

Enthusiasts were delighted that so many people (perhaps 40-50) attended the first meeting of the Carlsbad By The Sea Alexa Club last week.

Using the Amazon Echo or Dot technologies has proved great fun and an enormous convenience for many of us, and sharing the latest “trick” we’ve discovered with our own use of “Alexa” has become a daily pleasure. We act like proud parents showing off our kids … or the owners of especially cute dogs … who revel in the admiration of others. Speaking personally, I haven’t had this much fun with a “gadget” in years and years, not to mention that I find it useful. And Jessica Yoon (a member of Front Porch’s Center for Innovation and Wellbeing, who shepherds the Alexa trials here) finds us new “skills” to try all the time … i.e., new things Alexa can do.  

How is it useful, the uninitiated may ask? Well, I don’t have to find a clock (and be sure it’s got the right time and hasn’t run out of batteries!) — I just ask Alexa the time. I figure out what to pull out of the closet to wear, and whether to put on extra sun block during my walk by asking Alexa for a weather report the night before. I get a “flash news briefing” from my favorite station (she gives you your choice — CNN, Fox, CBS, PBS. and even the BBC, if you prefer your news with a high-toned accent.) I am now letting Alexa keep my personal appointment calendar to back up my written notes (which I too often mislay).

I’m happily part of a small test group using Alexa to set our thermostats — all without moving from my easy chair, mind you — and turn on (or off) a night light at the far end of the living room, just by voice command. I set alarms and timers on Alexa — just in case I doze off over the novel I’m reading. I don’t want to miss the time for my bridge game, do I? Nor leave the laundry in the dryer to get re-wrinkled because I nodded off and didn’t get it out in time. Alexa doesn’t nap and she wakes me in time to get the wash-and-wears out and onto hangers (Now if only I could train her to do that part too).

She plays my favorite music on request ... though a secondary speaker would enhance the sound the Dot can deliver. (Echo is better than the Dot on sound, and the new Show is best of all, with twin Dolby speakers ... but that’s a subject for another day.)

Most fun of all was setting up Alexa-to-Alexa messaging with two friends who also have started using this magical device. Alexa’s usual bright blue signal ring (when she has an alarm for me) shows bright greenish-yellow, and a bell rings ... and one of my friends has left me a message. Yes, we could wait ‘till we saw each other in the lobby. Yes, we could use the telephone. But there’s something so personal and private AND FUN about using Alexa. I haven’t had this much fun since we were kids and strung a wire between two tin cans and played “telephone.”

If you’re a “hold out” who says, “Who needs this complication? I do fine without it,” well yes, you do — thanks to all the help and services Carlsbad By The Sea offers us. True. But once you have accustomed yourself to saying “Alexa ... good morning” and had her cheerfully announce “Good morning. Did you know this is National Shark Week? Ask me to tell you a shark joke.” You’ll be hooked. And you’ll love it. Ask John Sanders or Chris Craig-Jones to set you up and get you started. There are Dots available through the Alexa Club. As the ad used to say “Try it ... you’ll like it.” Guaranteed.


The Amazon Alexa, a voice-activated personal assistant, has commanded the attention and excitement of consumers since its release. In collaboration with residents and staff at Carlsbad by the Sea, a Front Porch retirement community, the Front Porch Center for Innovation and Wellbeing launched a pilot to explore the potential use case scenarios of this emerging innovation.

To learn more check out MIT Technology Review's recent article The Octogenarians who love Amazon's Alexa, or read our impact story on FPCIW.org.

 

5 Ways Tech Products Will Help Us Age Well

A visit to CES 2017 turned up caregiving robots and vital sign 'tattoos'

By Jim Pagliarini for Next Avenue

One of the many helpful robot prototypes at CES using voice recognition to assist humans with daily tasks

It is the year 2025 and I have just celebrated my 85th birthday. I still live at home. This afternoon, I got into my self-driving car and went to my great granddaughter’s house for a visit. She introduced me to a group of her friends over lunch and I heard every word they said. I was a part of the conversation.

Two weeks ago, I fell in the bathroom and within minutes, my son’s voice came over my watch to ask me if everything was ok. Last night, I sat in my massage chair, and asked “Alexa” to play the top musical hits from when I met my wife in college. I closed my eyes and it brought back wonderful memories.

And although I technically live alone, I have one of the greatest companions I have ever had in my life — Tina, my personal assistant robot. Life ain’t bad.


Back to 2017 now: I recently returned from the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas — the largest, electronics show in the world where the most innovative cutting-edge technology products are introduced each year. Nearly 200,000 people attended and wandered through some 2.47 million square feet of exhibit space.

I was invigorated by the energy and innovation that I saw. Whether these products will materialize or not, I applauded each one — even the “smart” hair brush which helps make those critical decisions about how to comb your hair.

While I don’t really want a hairbrush that is smarter than I am, I can note five consumer electronic trends with great potential to help us be more independent, safe, purposeful and productive as we age. Most products are not ready for prime time yet. But if you are like me — planning and thinking about how to be as vital, productive and non-burdensome as possible as our bodies and brains start to fail — these innovations and trends represent some encouraging news:

1. Put down that mouse and talk to me. Thirty months ago, voice recognition software would get one out of every four words wrong. Today, “machines” are on parity with how we hear each other as humans. Over the course of the next couple of years, expect an explosion of voice-activated things you can do — order groceries, send your son an email, turn up the heat in your home, turn on the lights when you have to go to the bathroom at night. You get the picture. Lately, much to the dismay of my spouse, I have been spending a great deal of time talking to Alexa, Amazon’s disembodied voice that lives in the company’s Echo cylinder. It is quite remarkable what she can do today, and I feel certain that Alexa will only get better.

2. Let your car do the (autonomous) driving. If you have been lucky enough to be with your parents as they age, you will know that one of the hardest things to get them to do is give up the keys to the car. The car is independence. Freedom! Well within the next decade, however, you’ll be able to keep your car, tell it where you want it to go and not have to worry about your eyesight or reflex time. It will be like having your own personal chauffeur.

3. I can hear you now. As we age, we all lose some capacity to hear and to distinguish certain sounds. One statistic I heard at CES was that the average person waits seven years before he or she does anything about a loss in hearing. Speaking from personal experience, we spent thousands of dollars on hearing aids for my parents, which they seldom wore. Why? Well, in addition to adding to what they perceived as a social stigma, hearing aids were often buggy — whistling and uncomfortable with constantly-dying batteries. And with little competition in the marketplace, the product has improved only slightly. However, a recent decision by the FDA has opened the floodgates to tech innovators who will be able to sell some amazing new products to help people cope with age-related hearing loss without going through doctors or audiologists. Even better? These products won’t break the bank in a way hearing aids can today. (For more information about hearing loss and how to treat it, please visit Next Avenue’s hearing loss guide.)

4. I am 80 and getting a tattoo. A Chinese company at CES introduced a product that looked and worked a bit like a fake tattoo (just press on your skin and peel off, leaving something looking like a tattoo) but actually functioned like a computer sensor that monitored vital signs. Reports from the “tattoo” could then be generated and sent over the Internet to medical professionals or families and caregivers. The wearable monitoring device trend was ubiquitous at CES this year.

5. My son moved out, but my robot moved in. Remember Rosie from The Jetsons? Robots resembling her were everywhere at CES this year, with companies introducing them as “babysitters” and “elder care companions.” While not yet fully realized, these first-generation companions, I predict, will be great friends to many of us as we age. (If you’re having a hard time envisioning what I mean, watch this video of a companion robot in action.)

Neither I nor Next Avenue endorse any product mentioned here. It is not what we do. What we do is hope to open doors and windows to your world for you to walk through and explore.

I am feeling pretty good about what is coming our way from a remarkable generation of innovators who are creating tools and products that will make us live fuller and more independent lives (even if they are doing it so they won’t have to take care of us)!

© Twin Cities Public Television - 2017. All rights reserved.



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