Older people embrace technology to enhance their lives

TWO weeks ago 62-year-old Co Wicklow grandfather David Lowen took out the Beatles’ debut album, Please Please Me, placed it on his turntable and listened to the sweet crackly sound of vinyl, revolving beneath an immaculately kept stylus. 

It was a treat not only to be transported back to 1963 when he bought the record, aged 11, but also to tune his ear to “that warm sound you get from vinyl, that you don’t get from the digital version — either from streaming or CD”.

He might have had to blow a speck of dust off the album — one of several hundred “in mint condition” he has collected since the ’60s, because, although he won’t part with his hoard of original records, it’s a rare ritual now to take them out of their sleeves.