"Technology is an enabler; it is not the solution," he adds. Further, using high-tech tools can be a solitary act that creates "unintended opportunities for isolation. This idea that people are going to get all their socialization through the Internet is just not going to happen.""People think that somehow boomers are going to trump biology" in terms of being able to stay technically proficient as they get older, Collins says, "but it's not going to happen."People with Parkinson's, for example, face challenges in using most of the small, touch-screen devices now on the market, he observes. The new iPhone has won raves for its digital assistant, called Siri. But what if the user can't hear? Or what if they have macular degeneration and can't see the screen on a computing device?
David Brooks on the "soft and squishy" attributes that are becoming important in combination with technical skills. September 2015