Friday, August 30, 2013

Just Dance

We found this article to be offer a refreshing perspective on losing your self-consciousness as you age.

Boomers Dance Like No One is Watching (original source)

Amidst DC’s oppressive afternoon humidity and smell of happy hour politics is Jazz in the Garden—a complementary music series ensconced in the National Gallery of Art’s sculpture garden that for many Washingtonians, unofficially marks the start summer in the District.

Every Friday night, from about 5:30 to 8, you can find scores of people—underpaid interns, suave and single twentysomthings, financiers with their wives and children, no-name political hopefuls—flooding the perimeter of the Mall in hopes of networking, getting a bit of culture, and ossified off of even more sangria. Friends and lovers lounge on picnic blankets under the alien shade of trees, latecomers amble, children fidget impatiently.

But boomers? Boomers dance— and dance like no one is watching.
Recently single and unusually sensitive to the risk of social judgment, I tentatively walked into the garden alongside a few friends who—similarly reticent—began to survey the space for some asylum. No such luxury was to be had — and the garden’s lawn was already saturated with patrons. So we continued walking.

Maybe I was projecting—or maybe I wasn’t—but everywhere I turned, it seemed like I wasn’t alone in my feelings of gross self-consciousness. Beautiful, stylish, and young cohorts of twentysomethings clustered, circled, and cowered into themselves, nervously tinkering with their phones or taking desperate sips of liquid courage. Anxious laughter, compulsive hair-checking, transparent bravado—it was like being confined to the insufferable awkwardness of a pubescent romance.

Everyone cared and no one was dancing—at least no one my age.

Just a few steps ahead—closer to the jazz—the ambiance suddenly and palpably changed. There they were—the boomers—in all their vigor and unyielding alacrity, grooving, moving, and gyrating to the music with an irreverence I could only envy. I stopped, arrested with delight, to watch them.

In this alternate universe—where the fear of social judgment was refreshingly absent—there was a sense of youthfulness my millennial counterparts lacked.

What made these boomers so free? And why was everyone else so damn boring?

Esteemed psychologist and scholar of life span development Dr. Laura Carstensen of Stanford University has endeavored to answer this question. She posits that in the advent of decreasing time horizons, older adults become more socioemotionally selective in their goals. Put simply, when time is perceived as limited, emotional goals assume primacy—and the pursuit of meaningful social interactions becomes more valuable than normative social influence or information seeking.

You see, boomers simply don’t have time to waste. They’ve got life to celebrate.

From afar, I admired a couple—perhaps in their late 60s, early 70s—dancing enthusiastically to the music. When I finally mustered enough courage to approach them and express my admiration, I asked what made them so youthful. They said, quite matter-of-factly:

“We make our own youth. We are not our number, we are our experiences. We don’t have time not to live each day like a dance no one is watching.”

I couldn’t help but pity myself and twentysomethings as a demographic. Would it take us a lifetime to feel that free—to see what is really important in this short life of ours?

In the meantime, I put my drink down and started to dance, too. It was the freeest I’d ever felt.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Google Glass Can Help Disabled

Original source from Washington Post HERE

Google Glass, other wearables may give the disabled a new measure of independence

It’s been 18 years since Tammie Lou Van Sant held a camera. But nearly two decades after a car accident left her paralyzed from the chest down, Van Sant is shooting again — thanks to a device that could be part of technology’s next big trend.

Google’s Glass headset, which connects to users’ smartphones and displays information on a screen that hovers above one eye, is the first of what analysts say may be a boom in wearable technology — headsets, watches, fitness trackers and other devices that are worn rather than slipped into a pocket. Analysts say growing interest in wearable tech could translate into big money for technology firms, with projected sales of up to 9.6 million such devices worldwide by the end of 2016.

But the new technology also has raised new concerns about privacy. Lawmakers in Europe and the United States have asked Google to clarify its privacy policy in relation to Google Glass. For example, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) last month pressed the company for information on how it will protect the privacy of passersby who may not realize they are being filmed by the handset.

Google has told lawmakers it is “thinking carefully” about the privacy issues that have arisen along with its plans to bring Glass to the mass market as soon as next year.

But for some people with disabilities, the rise of wearable technology has given them a new measure of independence.

Google has distributed hundreds of the handsets for testing. For Van Sant, 52, of Santa Cruz, Calif., being an early Google Glass user means a return to a much-missed photography hobby as well as the ability to answer her own phone calls, respond to text messages and take small trips on her own using the headset’s access to Google Maps.

“I just go out into the world now,” she said. “I can take pictures or do anything I want.”

Until now, wearable devices to help people with disabilities were — by and large — developed by medical companies or garage hobbyists who gave little thought to a wider consumer market. New consumer interest in wearables, however, means that people will have access to cheaper, more versatile devices that can run specialized apps developed specifically for the needs of people with disabilities, said Greg Priest-Dorman, who is advising Google on the Glass project and has been making his own wearable devices since the mid-1980s.

Researchers at Georgia Tech, working with Google, have discovered that a smartphone app that teaches parents to use sign language with their deaf children is used more often when integrated with the headset. Other researchers have used similar technology to help visually impaired users to crowdsource everything from whether an outfit matches to whether a child’s rash needs a doctor’s attention. With Glass, they can take a picture of their outfit, for example, then post it to an Internet forum for feedback.

Those small moments of self-reliance may sound trivial to some, but they can mean a lot to someone with disabilities, Priest-Dorman said.

“We don’t need them to live — they’re not breathing machines,” he said. “But it’s also an amazing feeling when you don’t need to be dependent on someone.”

Alex Blaszczuk, 26, who was paralyzed from the chest down in a 2011 car accident, said the little things Google Glass enables her to do are some of the most remarkable — such as joining in when her friends whip out their cellphones to look up the definition of a word or an actor in a movie.

Blaszczuk, a student at Columbia Law School, said she does get some strange looks from passersby, particularly those who cannot tell whether her Glass headset is related to the other devices she uses as a result of her disability, or those who wonder whether she is filming them. But that, she joked, comes with its own benefits, as well.

“I wore it on the plane, and they were all very careful about answering me,” she said. “I think it helps keep the staff in line.”