Home, Sweet Quantified Home

Aging in Place, Connected Health, Consumer Electronics, Family and Friends, Home Care, Quantified Self, Ubiquitous Computing No Responses »
Jul 032011

Quant, I’m used to geek or nerd but quant seems so….so……borg-like. I don’t think that I would like to carry that label. Some believe quants brought us the now infamous Flash Crash in 2010, a nearly 1,000 point drop in the New York Stock Exchange that occurred in minutes, not hours or days. Analyzing data at the speed of computing allows machines to identify patterns to trade large numbers of stocks in milliseconds. The time that these stocks are held can be mere fractions of a second. The algorithm and speed provides great advantage. Humans cannot compete with the machine. 60 Minutes did a piece on this activity. Coded and executed, does the creator still have control of the system? They say they do. I’m wary. Until we learn how to look with an educated eye, I guess we’ll have to take their word for it *ugh*.

It’s just a little creepy. As I said, borg-like.

There is, however, a softer side to quantitative analysis. People are leveraging it to understand many things in the world at higher levels of detail, including themselves, the quantified self. They study sleep patterns, mood, productivity, and learning. The number of opportunities for personal insight from analysis of our daily data is infinite. It is bound only by our imagination. People will be able to manage their own existence, their wellness, in a new way, armed with information. Continue reading »

Posted by Crackerbelly at 1:10 pm

The Story of the Presence Lamp

Aging in Place, Consumer Electronics, Family and Friends, Home Care 2 Responses »
May 112011

The Presence Lamp was an experiment done by researchers at MIT and Xerox Labs about ten years ago.  They built a lamp and then connected it to the internet. They gave it a motion sensor so it could sense when someone was near.  Let’s say you have one in your living room, and your father who lives in Salt Lake City also has one.  When you get home, your lamp senses your presence, and then sends a signal over the internet to your father’s lamp that turns it on. It doesn’t do anything else.  There are no reply buttons.  It simply acts as a way of sharing your status with a loved one. Continue reading »

Posted by Crackerbelly at 11:03 pm Tagged with: , ,

2011: The Beginning of the End for Healthcare as We Know It

Aging in Place, Consumer Electronics, Home Care No Responses »
Apr 052011

By Mark Shea, MCDM

A wave of change has arrived for the health care industry. Even the most powerful representatives of health care, government and business will be unable to stop this incoming tide. I can say this with relative certainty because I am a Baby Boomer. 79 million people, 26% of the US population, are about to get old. According to Pew Research, as of January 1, 2011, 10,000 Baby Boomers per day are having their 65th birthday. This will continue for the next 19 years.

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Posted by Crackerbelly at 2:42 am Tagged with:

The Home Care Agency of the 21st Century (Part 1)

Aging in Place, Home Care, Miscellany No Responses »
Apr 052011

By Mark Shea, MCDM

I try to think of every link that I create on the Web as a promise. Please don’t go away. This really is an essay about the Home Care Agency of the 21st Century.

As I thought about this essay, it was hard for me to know where to start. Context is important. The piece of the picture that I have that is probably represented by the fewest number of people reading this document and maybe the most important, is my Digital Media and Social Media perspective. This doesn’t make me better than you. It just means I can see something of the whole picture that you cannot. I need you to help me see your piece too. This topic involves so many different industries, perspectives…..well, it is a complex issue, one that we don’t even have a common language to discuss. Digital Media and Social Media enable all of us to share with each other to get a better look at the big picture and these media do this in some very democratic (small ‘d’) and surprising ways. Continue reading »

Posted by Crackerbelly at 2:38 am Tagged with:

The Home Care Agency of the 21st Century (Part 2)

Aging in Place, Consumer Electronics, Home Care, Miscellany No Responses »
Apr 052011

By Mark Shea, MCDM

The Home Care Agency of the 21st Century will be the same as it is now in very many ways and in the most important way. We provide human companionship, human care, human assistance, and most importantly, human touch. Humans will die without these things. We not only crave the companionship, care, and touch of others. Aging in PlaceWe need it. Without it, we fail to thrive and this is particularly true for babies and the elderly. We know this at our core as humans. This is why solitary confinement is considered an extreme punishment. The work of a caregiver is to comfort, to assist, and to love, whatever may come and with any luck, it might be a healing. We are there to help people die too. We help them to die with dignity and as comfortably as we can manage. We soothe families. We laugh with them and cry with them. We cannot be replaced by machines. We are the human element that must remain.

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Posted by Crackerbelly at 2:06 am Tagged with:

My Final Days, a Reverie

Aging in Place, Consumer Electronics, Home Care, Miscellany No Responses »
Apr 052011

By Mark Shea, MCDM

A vision for my future is to spend my final days in a hospital bed at home. In this dream, I would experience something very similar to what I experience now in a hospital or nursing home….but a little better. I would still be able to go to a hospital or skilled nursing facility if there was a reason to go there, for example, for surgery, but otherwise, why leave home? I press a call button and don’t have to wait 20 minutes to tell the nurse what I need.

Age in Place

My overhead screen pops on and I talk to one of those nice kids in India. And lickety-split, in just a few minutes, a nurse shows up with the bed pan I needed. But I’m home. I don’t have to put up with the lame ass cable channels at the hospital. I’m home and I still get my Red Zone football channel. I can yell at the dog when it barks too much and feed him peanut butter like I’m not supposed to. Family and friends can come and go…..no visiting hours here. Just like in the hospital, aides and orderlies come and go to clean my room, change my linens, bathe me, and chastise my wife for bringing me milkshakes. I will be home. That is my dream.

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Posted by Crackerbelly at 1:42 am Tagged with:
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