Ceilidh

Michael Zey
futurist3000@aol.com

What's likely to be one of hottest areas of research and development? Brain science, says MIT's Dr. Coughlin. "If you look at universities, it's where the huge money is going." One start-up company, Posit Science Corp. of San Francisco, already is trying to capitalize on the trend, rolling out memory-building computer games in Bay area retirement communities. The company claims that the hundreds of older people using its software in preliminary tests have the mental acuity of someone five to 10 years younger. Posit plans to have home versions of the games out by next year. Within a decade, the company hopes to kick-start "brain gyms" as well as online "cognitive- fitness centers," where seniors can play the games in a group environment, says Jeffrey Zimman, chief executive.

It's not as far-fetched as it sounds, some observers say. "Traditional physical-fitness-oriented facilities [that] understand that a significant part of the market is boomers are going to start developing places for people to go to exercise their brain function," says Mr. Green, the marketer in Denver. Although boomers could play computer games at home, "people want social reinforcement," meaning they are likely to either seek out special places to go through the games or join a Web-based service that would connect them online with other brain-exercisers.

Intel's team of social scientists is developing computerized memory aids, too. The gadgets grew out of a study, begun in 1999, "about digital entertainment that wound up being about dementia," says the company's Mr. Dishman. As he spent time in boomer households, trying to show them what they could do with digital TV and broadband access, "they would say, 'I don't need another way to watch TV. I need help taking care of my parents,' or 'I have to figure out how to manage my diabetes.' "

So Intel shifted its focus and developed potential aids for older adults. One gadget, tested in two dozen households in Las Vegas and Portland, Ore., was designed to help people ease their fears of not recognizing a face or voice when answering the door or telephone. Intel used wireless sensor neworks to collect data for four months about who visited, called and emailed the participants, and how often. The data were used to create a "solar-system display" on a TV or computer screen. Circles representing friends and family orbit around you; when you move the mouse over those circles, you see photos of the people they represent, along with the last time you spoke to them and what you talked about.

Similarly, Intel developed what designers dubbed "caller ID on steroids." When the phone rings, a nearby digital photo frame displays a picture of the caller and lists what you talked about during your last call. The "presence lamp" was also a big hit among test subjects. One of these lights is placed in the parent's house, one in the child's. When the child returns home after a visit, the light automatically goes on in the parent's house, and vice versa. The gadget lowered depression among the older adults with Alzheimer's disease by showing them their kids had gotten home safely. It also alerted a few boomers when their parents got lost on the drive home after they had dinner together.

"It was in crude prototype, and needed a lot of baby-sitting by our engineers," says Mr. Dishman. But when the trial was over, "the people said, 'No, don't take this away from me.' " Now Intel hopes that the computer makers that buy its chips will bring these products to market.

GETTING AROUND

Whatever boomers drive in future decades will be a big deal: Of the 13 cars that the average American household buys over a lifetime, seven are purchased after the head of the household turns 50, says Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, a consulting firm in Bandon, Ore.

That number could head even higher, says Rob Tregenza, transportation analyst for Minneapolis-based market researcher Iconoculture Inc., who expects many boomer couples to add a third car. They covet what he calls "aspirational" vehicles that display their personal style. Muscle cars, for instance, are starting to make a comeback. Already, Ford Motor Co. has revived the classic Mustang body, and "there have been rumors that GM is going to start diving into the arsenal of Camaros," he says.

While boomers want to flex their muscles on the road, they also want to be as safe as possible when doing so. Many car makers are starting to tinker with options designed for older customers, but marketable to all ages: vision enhancement, which typically uses ultrasound or infrared technology to make it easier to see at night; collision- warning systems; swivel seats, making it easier to get in and out; and heated seats in cooler climes so drivers and their passengers can use them to help bad backs.

Even with all that, boomers won't be able to drive forever. So what happens when they must quit -- but find themselves living in cul-de- sac suburbs with little public transportation? MIT's Dr. Coughlin predicts the emergence of car clubs. People who no longer drive may pool their resources to buy a car, then share it with a younger driver who serves as a chauffeur. This would be particularly attractive in college towns filled with graduate students who can't afford their own wheels.

"We do a very good job of getting older adults around [via vans and ambulances] for trips they need. We do a terrible job with trips they want," he says. "The boomers are a generation of wants. They are going to make sure transportation is as seamless for them to get ice cream as it is to get a prescription renewed."

Already, local aging agencies are experimenting with driving pools. The Atlanta Regional Commission, for example, has sold discounted vouchers to 20 people who are at least 60 and can't drive, allowing them to hire someone they know to drive them around rather than relying on formal government programs for help. They are finding that the $16.79 average cost "buys a trip to the doctor, plus the grocery store, drugstore and bank, instead of just the doctor. And the driver helps you in and out of the car and waits for you while you're there," says Kathryn Lawler, the project director.

LEISURE QUEST

Despite the fact that some boomers will struggle financially as they age, a sizable number are expected to have enough money to fuel the market for increasingly exotic travel. IExplore Inc., a Chicago-based adventure-travel company, already has received requests from boomers in the past year to sea-kayak the Panama Canal, take champagne flights to the North Pole, live with a Mongolian family in the Gobi Desert, walk the rainforest tree canopies of the Amazon and see the Serengeti in a hot-air balloon.

"Boomers have been in an aggressive period of accumulating assets -- homes, cars, boats," says George Deeb, iExplore's chief executive. "Now they're going to get into a period of accumulating experiences."

To that end, Dr. Dychtwald, the San Francisco gerontologist, expects to see "experience agents," a career counselor-cum-travel agent. "You could go to them and say, 'Look, I'm 57, I'm going to take a year off, and I don't know what to do. Help me with a plan,' " he says. "You might spend three months on an archaeological dig, four months living on an island."

Ironically, the onslaught of boomers could endanger a relatively new retirement institution: the country's 500-plus lifelong-learning institutes, most of them affiliated with local colleges (many are listed at www.elderhostel.org/ein/intro.asp). The programs typically offer college-level courses and are open to anyone over a specific age, usually 55 or 60, regardless of previous academic experience.

But age-segregated programs could have trouble drawing boomers as members, warns Ron Manheimer, director of the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, a lifelong-learning institute in Asheville. His center has done extensive focus groups with local boomers, including some already attending its programs, to figure out what they're looking for. His findings: Boomers are "just so diverse in what they want," from the types of classes they'd like to see to the time segments in which they're offered -- making it hard to build a traditional course schedule that will interest a broad range of potential students.

One new approach the center is trying: a full-year program that goes into more depth than the typical semester-length or shorter course, culminating in a certificate of completion. The first experiment, the Blue Ridge Naturalist, is targeted to those wanting to better understand and appreciate the natural environment. The class is meeting Tuesday nights and in the field one Saturday each month, addressing topics as diverse as the heritage of Native Americans, folklore and the night sky.

Likewise, Boston-based Elderhostel Inc., one of the most successful providers of educational-travel programs for older adults, is trying to attract younger clients with its Road Scholar program. Rolled out last year, the program offers a series of trips with smaller groups, more free time and fewer lectures -- features that Elderhostel thinks adults in their 50s and early 60s are looking for. In the first year, 1,700 people signed up. The most popular trips: a spiritual journey through India and a look at criminal forensics.

LEGACY -- THE MOVIE

"Boomers are going to figure out really creative ways of expressing their death," possibly by producing video autobiographies, says Mr. Green, the marketer. For instance, he says he has met with an entrepreneur currently trying to figure out how to set up production studios in shopping malls where boomers can bring in their photos, home-movie footage "of when you were the prom queen" and other memorabilia, then work with a script writer to produce something akin to a Biography Channel segment.

Cemeteries are expected to go digital as well, both with records of gravestones online for genealogical research, as well as for nostalgia's sake. "We should expect to see interactive displays about people, where you can push a button and get a two-minute take on that person's life," Mr. Green says. "And that will also be captured in perpetuity on the Internet."

Boomers have a stronger need than their parents and grandparents "to leave a legacy, and it's going to be a very big business," says David Wolfe, a Reston, Va., marketing consultant who studies the older population. He recently pitched a project to Konica Minolta Holdings Inc. that would help guide boomers on their memoirs, "because a lot of this is about imaging."

What about funerals? Already, boomers are personalizing their parents' memorials, and will probably customize their own memorials in more elaborate ways, says Mark Duffey, chief executive of Everest Funeral Package LLC in Houston, a start-up company that sells independent funeral-planning services. One possibility: creative souvenirs. At a funeral he recently attended, "this guy's dad was a great cook, so he printed off his recipes, bound them up and handed out these books of all the recipes he never gave away."

Cremation has been increasing about one percentage point a year for the past decade, and that's expected to surge with the boomers, Mr. Duffey adds. Instead of having full-fledged funerals, Mr. Duffey's clients are asking, why not "a memorial service at my church, or a party at a restaurant?" he says. "There's a trend of people wanting to have this celebration, a party in honor of their friends. Once people go to a few of these, it's going to accelerate."

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Ms. Greene is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Atlanta bureau. She can be reached at encore@wsj.com.