Proxy Users Enable Older People Creative Writing on the Web

Abstract

This paper presents several state-of-the-art concepts within Internet studies and applies them to the creative writing of older people using the Internet. For more than 10 years two creative Web users aged 80+, assisted by younger proxy users, were involved in preliminary action research. It was aimed at finding patterns of inducing older people's creativity and sharing their wisdom with the general Internet audience. The effectiveness of conducted action research in transferring wisdom using silver digital content is high. It is demonstrated with (a) qualitative participants' insights, (b) the quantitative description of statistics of blog visits, and (c) the social significance of the topics covered in the created content. Lasting for more than a decade and located within the space of socio-technological solutions in Central and Eastern Europe, the results delivered patterns of emerging technologies aimed at enhancing older people's creativity on the Web. The insights from those two action-based case studies enabled the development of new hypotheses. New directions of further, more advanced research of older users' activity are based on interdisciplinary studies at the crossroads of public health, sociological theory, gerontology, and human-computer interaction studies. New research questions are presented, to be explored within the social scientific studies of the next-generation Internet. Departing from the established concepts and preliminary research, the authors hypothesize that: (1) in order to optimize non-human technology-based assistants, human proxy users should be researched; (2) voice assistant technology could become the primary proxy for a production of silver digital content; and (3) interactive and intelligent technology will be the substitute for social actors that prevent exclusion and disengagement. The remaining research question also refers to the conditions under which the technology can be a viable substitute for proxy users.

Google Translate Facilitates Conference Abstracts’ Acceptance, But Not Invitations to Deliver an Oral Presentation

“…Recently the potential of voice assistant technology usage as a proxy for production of silver content (ie. creative, productive, wise and autonomous activity of older adults in new media) has been noted, together with number of new challenges it generates [17]. We noticed the interlingual potential of such technology using the translators mentioned in this article.…”

The Local Awareness-Raising of Public Mental Health in the Capital City of Poland through Launch of Local Alliance against Depression

“…In Poland, some of the earliest intuitions leading toward similar conclusions were once expressed by an outstanding individual: the rural doctor who moved his interests toward urban school medicine, counseling and suicidology. As he noticed in his unpublished government-commissioned report in 1970s and reminded in his public intellectual activities [8], the community-related tandem of the dysfunctional school environment and family home co-determined the depression, hopelessness, and desire to leave among adolescents in Poland. After 2000, in Europe, the 4-level approach was named Best Practice by the European Commission and WHO [3,9,10].…”