aging-and-technology

Edi­tor’s Note: This arti­cle is excerpt­ed from Longevi­ty Rules: How to Age Well Into the Future,  a com­pendi­um 0f 34 excel­lent essays where lead­ing longevi­ty experts help pol­i­cy­mak­ers and the pub­lic bet­ter under­stand the aging expe­ri­ence. In the essay below, Joseph Cough­lin, the Direc­tor of MIT Age­Lab, explores the role that tech­nol­o­gy can play in aging well. Copy­right 2010, Eska­ton.

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Aging is not for wimps. While liv­ing longer has become remark­ably com­mon­place, liv­ing well takes a lot of work. Longevi­ty is cre­at­ing new and expand­ed “jobs” for indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, for­mal care­givers and pub­lic agen­cies. Dur­ing the past decade many have argued that tech­nol­o­gy is the answer to aging — with­out real­ly ask­ing what the ques­tion is. This def­i­n­i­tion of the “aging and tech­nol­o­gy oppor­tu­ni­ty” is dri­ven by those who are wild­ly pas­sion­ate about inven­tion, but not flu­ent in the art of inno­va­tion — that is, putting ideas to prac­ti­cal use. The ques­tions that should be asked by pol­i­cy­mak­ers, busi­ness and the aging com­mu­ni­ty are:

• What are the jobs of aging ser­vices that we are try­ing to achieve?
• How might tech­nol­o­gy and col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ships accom­plish these tasks or pro­duce supe­ri­or outcomes?
• Where should pol­i­cy­mak­ers and busi­ness direct their lim­it­ed resources to cre­ative­ly exploit tech­nol­o­gy to enable indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies to live bet­ter — not just longer?

[Read more…] about Exploit­ing Tech­nol­o­gy and Col­lab­o­ra­tion to Enable Qual­i­ty Aging