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Seeing the news today about driverless cars, how will that effect the future of persons with dementia. Since the car responds to electronic input rather than an individuals operation of the steering wheel, will it enable persons with dementia to stay in the drivers seat? It could be used by someone with mild impairment to get to appointments and shopping without asking for help. Of course they would have to learn how to operate the vehicle and learning is not one of their attributes. How would their driving be curtailed? Do you foresee new laws to regulate their driving? I doubt that I will be around to see this but will you or your children?

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This is one of those generational gaps. The same fears happened when TV, radio, newspapers, books and writing became widespread. Humanity had a fine tradition of passing down knowledge orally for 10's of thousands of years. Writing took all that away. No more story time every night or secret skills passed down orally from parent to child for generations. Anyone that could read had access to that knowledge. For hundreds of years, writing was thought of as evil magic. Everyone of those things has been a boon for humankind. Just like the current digital revolution has been and will continue to be. Next up, direct neural connections. Everyone will have the sum of all human knowledge available to them at all times.

By the way, having access to information does not make anyone smart. It's been known for a long time that just being able to look something up doesn't make you smart. It's the actual process of learning that enables connections that allow for insight and innovation. Someone can have access to every word ever spoken yet not be able to create anything from it. It takes the hard work of actually learning from that information that makes the spark. So having the sum of human knowledge in your head doesn't alleviate the need for school. It just saves your back so you don't have to haul around a bag of books anymore. Then school can be what it should be. A place to explore and experiment and work together. Not to rote learn facts that are otherwise meaningless to one's existence.
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Another thing I worry about is that we will have more dementia as people will be using their smartphone to find information instead of storing it in one's own brain. No more remembering how to get from point A to point B as the smartphone will tell us how to get there.

No more remembering birthdays or special events, the smartphone will let us know. Why bother having schools, kids can learn from the Internet everything, well not really learn, but learn how to find it.

Then someone will hack the whole system, the Smartphone and internet goes down, and people will be mindless sitting around not knowing how to hold a conversation with someone else. I mean look at today, if you go out to eat, people are busy on their cellphones already and not joining conversations with those at their table.

I also see people at sporting events on their cellphone, like come on you paid big bucks to be up close and personal at the game, put down the phone and watch it.
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People aren't fully considering what the impact of driverless cars will be. It's a convergence of a variety of technologies at the same time. From ASI to electric cars to solar. There will be no concerns about maintaining the vehicle. Most likely, you won't own it. The vehicle will also "fuel" itself. Mobility will be a service, not a product. If someone can use a taxi, they can use a driverless car. The driver is the car, all the occupants are passengers.

Most cars only get used 1-2 hours a day. Otherwise they just sit. It's a waste. The sun only shines during the day, so solar power needs storage for night use. What would be a good way to store them? A fleet of electric cars. Until now that was problematic since people would have to plug in their cars to charge. Driverless cars change all that. Instead of having cars sit idle in a garage. They can be used to drive other people around or go to a charger to get charged by themselves. At night, they can go to the same "chargers" to plug in and power the electricity grid. We would need far fewer chargers since many smart cars can use the same charger versus now where people hog a charger just for one car.

All this means that mobility in the future will be cheaper than it is now. For a consumer, it's uber/lyft/taxi at much lower rates. With thousands of self driving cars on the road at anytime, there is simply no wait and thus no need for people to have their own car anymore. Since each car has much higher utilization and no driver, the cost per mile will not only be much lower than uber/lyft/taxi is now, but it will even be cheaper than owning your own car. Since it'll be like 10-20 people sharing the cost of each car.

Of course, some people will still want the luxury of owning their own car. They can still pay for it. For everyone else, it will be the era of cheap point to point transportation on demand.

As for how tech can help out in other ways for people with dementia. Instead of a caregiver having to be the "memory" for someone who can't remember, why can't that little box called a phone we all carry around do that for us? It's been used to comic effect in some TV shows. But in the future, there's no reason a phone/earbuds/glasses in the future that are with us 24/7 can't also be our around the clock caregivers/assistants. It won't be just a simple calendar. It will be an ASI who's sole existence is to know and help each user. Things similar to this have been available in business settings for a while. But the recent advances in cheap massively parallel processing and deep machine learning will enable it for us all at a much more competent level.
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Even new technology is baffling to me and I am only in my early 70's. That is why i am hanging onto my 1996 Jeep as it is pretty easy to drive, nothing complicated, even the radio is easy to use. I see the dashboards of new vehicles, and then i say forgetaboutit. I don't even have GPS as I can read a map. I use to joke that if my GPS was missing, that means I had been kidnapped !!!

The driverless cars would be a great boom to the younger folks who have disabilities. I am impressed with the cars that can sense the traffic in front has stopped and will brake automatically.... great for those who are too busy on their cellphones to notice.

But the driverless cars will still create some problems. People who get use to the the smart car or automatic braking, and for some reason need to use a regular vehicle, will they remember they need to pay full time and attention on the road?

Other new technology. I remember my Dad getting so frustrated with newer computers. He use to write Code going back decades but with today's newer computers he just couldn't keep up. I am finding the same issue with cellphones. I still have a flip phone but the texting is becoming more difficult so I need to upgrade.... Jiggerbug looks good so I might test drive one of those Smartphone. I really don't like talking on a cellphone as the line usually isn't very clear compared to a landline. Kids today think all calls are dropped, faded, garbled, etc. is the norm.
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I can see it helping if the problems are mainly physical like poor eyesight or mobility problems, but with dementia once they reach a point where driving is a problem I'm doubtful they could handle remembering appointments and getting from the car to wherever they need to be. And someone would still have to be able to make sure the car was fuelled up and maintained properly. And I bet when you figure in the cost of the technology and the insurance taking a cab would be many times cheaper.
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