feeling listless

Science Why should technology only be designed to cater for the needs of young people? Surely people over age of fifty sometimes need help with their day-to-day lives as well? It can't be easy for a pensioner in a supermarket doing their weekly shop to ask some teenage clerk to help them around. Wouldn't give them confidence and self-respect if they had the ability to do it themselves with a little bit technology which extends their physical reach. The AgeLab at MIT is designing just such machines, as Metropolis relates. "Joseph Coughlin sees it as a laboratory where he and his collaborators help divine a new lifestyle for the world's increasingly aging--but resiliently active--population. It's an impetus that Coughlin says is sorely needed if our society is to overcome its own denial--and in some cases revulsion--about growing old." My favourite is the Pencell, which can turn the handwritten word into speech.