[ExI] ok geezer, was: RE: Meta question again

[Keith Henson]

 On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 11:53 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
>>…Oh what a time to be alive, oh my, oh freaking my, what a cool time to
>> live is this…  Now tell me who here thinks this generation is not better off
>> than their parents, waaaay better off, better even compared to their older
>> siblings…spike

Perhaps in some things like you mention the internet.  But
economically, not in general.  To cut the payroll and raise their
bonuses, the corporate MBAs shipped all the jobs they could to places
with lower wages.  The effect was to hollow out what used to be the
middle class.  Without the relatively high pay that went with the jobs
now shipped out or automated out of existence, the bulk of the
population can no longer buy the products and services.  For a long
time they kept up their life style by going into debt, but the housing
bubble (by more of those MBAs) finally broke.  The current collapse in
oil and commodities has the cost below production for many things,
particularly oil.

An awful lot of the children of the middle class are unlikely to pay
off their student debts before they retire.  That means no savings, no
home, and for the responsible ones, no kids.

Bummer.

It's possible that Harvard will eventually be seen as the place that
destroyed the US economy.

Keith




> And another thing!  If I haven’t already beaten this topic to death, do
> indulge me, you young people and let your old Uncle spike focus on just that
> last sentence above and offer an idea.   Anyone here can take and run with
> it, do a startup, even become rich and famous, and it would please me if you
> do.  Say nice things about me online.  Or we can divide up: you be famous,
> I’ll be rich.
>
>
>
> What happened in just the last few years?  WiFi hot spots!  You can now have
> the internet RIGHT THERE in your pocket!  And it isn’t even expensive!  And
> OK Google!  Now any geek can talk to a sexy woman anytime he wants!  She’s
> always there (in a metaphysical sense anyway) never turns away in revolted
> disgust.  (Hey, theres a game: say something that even the Google Girl is
> disgusted.)  The fact that she isn’t a physical person literally present is
> a good thing actually: first, it keeps us married guys from getting into
> trouble and second, she doesn’t need to look at us, which would perhaps
> result in that sexy computer-generated voice making such astute observations
> as: eeewwww.
>
>
>
> Furthermore, it is even possible that the voice really isn’t as dazzling as
> she sounds.  Nah, that couldn’t be; she must be a knockout.
>
>
>
> But I digress.  Nobody offered any fun OK Google game suggestions, doh.  In
> any case, it gave me an idea.
>
>
>
> In my life I have had to thrice deal with Alzheimers.  No not me, dammit.
> Not yet anyway.  I meant with family members with Alzheimers, who spent
> their last days in a nursing home, all three.  Plenty of us here have dealt
> with that, and if you haven’t, lucky you, damn lucky you.  Go to a nursing
> home, or even better a specialized memory care facility and get up to speed
> on that please.
>
>
>
> One well-known characteristic of AD patients is that they repeat themselves,
> a lot.  One well-known characteristic of AD patients is that they repeat
> themselves, a lot.
>
>
>
> If people are not up to speed on how to deal with it, they usually do
> exactly the wrong thing.  When the patient repeats a previous comment two
> minutes later, the non-afflicted interlocutor often expresses unpleasant
> surprise, annoyance or shock, or all of these.  This reaction is noted by
> the patient, creating instant negative feedback.  AD patients often think
> they have said something offensive, have no idea what it was, and shut down.
> A sensitive patient is suddenly carrying the additional burden of having
> offended the interlocutor, and seem to be apologizing all the time.  Not
> recalling they apologized, they do it again and again, when they didn’t do
> or say anything wrong to start with.  This becomes tedious in a hurry.  Go
> to a nursing home, see for yourself please.
>
>
>
> A week ago, I proposed the OK Google game, with funny or insightful
> comebacks to easily-foreseen inputs to OK Google, such as the lonely geek
> trying to get the Google Girl to talk dirty to him.  Correctly realizing
> that this free timewaster is so much easier and cheaper than the usual way
> geeks get girls to talk dirty to them, they could entertain themselves
> indefinitely with such classics as Google Girl, will you kiss and carry on
> with me?  Response: Go ahead, it’s your phone.  That sorta, thing, we could
> have such fun writing the scripts.
>
>
>
> Let’s take this same idea, an online voice-recognition icon graphics text to
> speech program, and make it tuned to stuff that AD patients might utter, for
> one well-known characteristic of AD patients is that they repeat themselves,
> a lot.  The right way to deal with that is to remember exactly what you said
> last time the patient made that comment, and respond the same way you did
> before.  You give the patient positive feedback, and perhaps it will store
> correctly the second time, perhaps not, or the third time or the tenth, but…
> if we were to automate that process, it might work a lot better in getting
> the AD patient unstuck in that loop.
>
>
>
> Imagine we create an OK Geezer app, on the computer, with an attractive but
> not necessarily youthful icon, such as one resembling Jill Stein, perhaps
> even with Dr. Stein’s mellifluous and strangely provocative voice, but not
> her actual… like…  ideas.  We supply the responses, Jill supplies those good
> looks.  Guys from the National Geographic generation will love it!  We could
> even make one for the ladies, with an even more aged but pleasant enough
> appearance, such as Joe Biden.  But without Joe’s ideas.
>
>
>
> Then we anticipate stuff that AD patients might say, load them into OK
> Geezer, and have a hell of a cool little game.  We wouldn’t even need to
> call it something as overt as OK Geezer.   Alternatives?
> PokemonGoToTheBathroom?  ThanksForTheMemories?
>
>
>
> Anyone who wants to work together on a startup, here am I.  We have a clear
> enough problem statement:  One well-known characteristic of AD patients is
> that they repeat themselves, a lot.  We have icon-designers (my own ten yr
> old son can make good icons.)  We have speech recognition software.  We have
> all you young software hipsters.  We could do a startup without ever leaving
> our own homes.  I can write a few witty comebacks to those horny old geezers
> trying to schmooze up to Jill, some of you ladies can write some for Joe.
> We can get two phones or two computers, run OK Geezer on itself and let Jill
> and Joe schmooze each other.  That should be rather hilarious, and perhaps
> oddly provocative.
>
>
>
> Think about it.  Better idea: go visit a nursing home, stay inside that
> facility for at least one half hour, talk, look and listen.  If you have an
> elderly family member or friend already there, then spend at least one full
> dammit hour inside their facility.  Talk, look, listen.  Then come back, and
> think about it.  Then let’s do something, shall we?
>
>
>
> Now is a great time to be young.  But it has always been fun to be young,
> ja?  We have the opportunity to make now a great time to be old too.
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
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