As a bit of a luddite, e-ink is one of the few modern wizbangs I'm enamored with. It's so damn nice I take it as an inside woosh joke that it isn't everywhere and available without pawning my organs.
MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
11–20 of 259 posts
Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
#12As a side note on his mother remembering that the tablet exists, it sounds like she has amnesia quite like Henry Molaison, a famous case study in neuropathology. He had very specific brain damage that seemingly stopped him forming new memories in the same way as OP's mother, but studies showed that he could remember some things, just not consciously. So for example he would have warm feelings towards people who'd been caring for him despite not remembering them, and would also pick up card games more and more quickly as he played them repeatedly despite saying he didn't remember the game. OP's mother remembering the tablet sounds very similar, particularly when paired with the feeling of being remembered and loved by her children.
Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
#13Understanding that the condition is rare enough that most of us really don't have a need to prepare for it, I wonder if there are any habits one could cultivate that would make it easier to live with amnesia. Learning new things is my favorite past time and strongest coping mechanism, so the though of not being able to do that anymore is up there with locked-in syndrome on my list of greatest living fears. For exampl…
Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
#14What a beautiful use of technology to uphold someone's personhood, and let them know they are loved, despite (and with regard to) a profound injury. This reminds me of a desire I've had for a long time: a simple, wall-mountable eInk device that could be configured with a URL (+wifi creds) and render a markdown file, refreshing once every hour or so. It would be so useful for so many applications – I'm a parish priest…
Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
#15Understanding that the condition is rare enough that most of us really don't have a need to prepare for it, I wonder if there are any habits one could cultivate that would make it easier to live with amnesia. Learning new things is my favorite past time and strongest coping mechanism, so the though of not being able to do that anymore is up there with locked-in syndrome on my list of greatest living fears. For exampl…
As for amnesia, it seems like a habit of making notes and seeking out to read your own notes would be useful. However, the trend in technology to constantly change behaviour, appearance, and functionality makes anything digital a barrier. Manual notes are also susceptible to being impossible for ageing people to make. So it's really hard to think of something.
Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
#16Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
#17Understanding that the condition is rare enough that most of us really don't have a need to prepare for it, I wonder if there are any habits one could cultivate that would make it easier to live with amnesia. Learning new things is my favorite past time and strongest coping mechanism, so the though of not being able to do that anymore is up there with locked-in syndrome on my list of greatest living fears. For exampl…
Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
#18Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
#19> I ended up writing a small JavaScript function to maximize font size: it makes the text invisible (via CSS visibility: hidden), tries displaying the text at a very large size, and then tries successively smaller font sizes until it finds a size that lets all the text fit. It then makes the text visible again.
Wow -- not just for accessibility but this seems like a very useful feature to have in native CSS.
Nice find.
Overall such a heartwarming use of technology. Love.