The machine will come software that allows users to manage prescriptions as well as simplified tools for everyday use, such as managing photos.

The machine, which it is developing in partnership with charities Age Concern and Help the Aged, is one of several projects the firm is working on.

The plans were unveiled at a Digital Inclusion conference in London.

Read full story

As stated on the website of the German Ministry of Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, the aim is to enlarge the potential that senior citizens can provide to the economy, by developing new products and services for the elderly, which in turn can secure existing jobs and create new ones, and by making companies (in construction, interior design, technology, information design, tourism, etc.) aware of the enormous opportunities by this future trend and supporting them with new ideas.

A press release dated 23 April 2008, gives more detail about the initiatives planned:

Companies, experts and organisations for senior citizens and consumers will be able to constantly exchange experiences and ideas on a new national platform, with the aim of creating a stronger integration of the expertise of the elderly, and therefore better products, that will be useful and pleasant for all generations.

• Small and medium size companies will be made aware of the opportunities of the senior citizen market through regional cross-sector workshops and forums;
   
• To increase the number of new companies founded by senior citizens, they will offered customised information and training opportunities in collaboration with the Chambers of Commerce and the public institutions;
   
• A collection of “best practice” examples of promising business ideas will provide senior citizens with good ideas and encourage to make the jump towards independence.

Germany will become the leader in “trans-generational” design.

• A competence network on “universal design” gathers information and knowledge with regards to product development;
   
• Design competitions in educational institutions will provide inspiration for the type of products and packaging that are attractive and usable by people of any age group;
   
• A travelling exhibition aimed at the public at large will show particularly successful examples of products and ideas that transcend the generations.

Older consumers will more easily find products and services that are based on their needs and requirements.

• The German Government is investigating whether a quality label for age inclusive products can provide support to the elderly during shopping, and can stimulate the development of theses types of products;
   
• Information materials, such as checklists, will make it easier for senior consumers to find the useful products and services within the market offering.

The initiative will initially run until 2010.

Here are some other German language links:
- Wirtschaftskraft Alter (project site)
- Project backgrounder (pdf, 12 pages)
- Design competition “Von Kopf bis Fuß” [From head to toe]

Participle (which now finally has a webpage) is a new social enterprise designing the next generation of public services, with a focus on the big and seemingly intractable social issues of the 21st century. The two other Participle co-founders are Charles Leadbeater, the internationally renowned thinker and innovator, and author of the book We-Think, and Colin Burns, designer and formerly the CEO of IDEO London. The initiative is supported by NESTA, where Participle has its offices.

In the 30 minute interview which covered as much ground as a normal person can do in 60 minutes - Hilary is a fast talker - we discussed many of the areas that are dear to this blog, including co-creation with end-users, the power of design to transform public services and provide new approach to address seemingly difficult problems such as diabetes, and how to constructively deal with an ageing population. She also talks about her new Participle venture of course.

The interview was published on the website of Torino World Design Capital, where the author of this blog provides monthly contributions.

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High-tech gadgets and futuristic robots which Japan had hoped might lend a hand when the population turns gray haven’t caught on with the elderly, who according to forecasts will make up around 40 percent of the population by the middle of the century.

“Most (elderly) people are not interested in robots. They see robots as overly-complicated and unpractical. They want to be able to get around their house, take a bath, get to the toilet and that’s about it,” said Ruth Campbell, a geriatric social worker at the University of Tokyo.

Japanese manufacturers have learned the hard way that the elderly want everyday products adapted to their needs — easy to read for those with poor eyesight, big buttons for people with trembling hands and clear audio for the hard of hearing.

Read full story [Reuters]

As the populations of America, Asia and Europe continue to grey at an unprecedented rate, more and more objects will need to be designed to be elderly-friendly.

“How to design for this burgeoning group of consumers? Well, don’t, at least not specifically, recommends Davin Stowell, CEO of product design firm Smart Design (New York). He says designers should not limit themselves to products specifically marketed to the aged or elderly, except for extreme products. “We’re becoming a more youthful society,” he notes, not in terms of average age but with reference to how people perceive themselves.

His recommendation: think in terms of ‘universal,’ or better yet, ‘inclusive’ design. Using lighter materials, combining materials with greater contrasts to make products easier to see or for backlighting, and using of soft-touch or other easily handled grips: all are examples of design aspects that appeal to seniors but also offer benefits to most other users, too.”

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They research broke some notions held about old people and shifted the focus of design thinking from being a facilitator of special aids and appliances to seeking opportunities in the socio-economic and macro perspective. Their findings reveal distinct trends in the area of secondary occupations, connectivity, dignity and the way time and space is perceived amongst the elderly.

Drawing from user observation methodologies, design thinking and synthesis we observed and filmed old people in their homes in UK, US, Denmark, India, Taiwan, Italy, Israel, South Africa and Columbia.

Informed Anecdotes I: Insight into an ageing society (pdf, 11.9 mb, 19 pages)
This article puts the findings in context with the person and the possible solutions that apply to individuals.

Four main drivers were found to be the putty that holds the lives of the old people we observed together:

1. Secondary occupations: Old people find a secondary occupation to have a purpose in life, create rhyme and maintain self-esteem.
2. Connectivity: Communication, feeling of inclusiveness and information management is equally important to old people.
3. Dignity: Independence and self esteem change the perception of the self in old age.
4. Perception of time & space: How the use of time and space changes in various stages of old age.

The four main drivers were surprisingly found to be independent of culture, context, ethics, income or nationality.

Five related concepts were also detected and substantiated these findings:
1. The importance of rituals
2. Denial of ageing
3. Need for sense of rhythm
4. Grocery shopping is significant
5. The paradox of wisdom

The article concludes with a few potential concept directions to illustrate the possibilities of how we can translate the insights of this research into objective design thinking.

Informed Anecdotes II: Design for an ageing society (pdf, 3.5 mb, 12 pages)
The second article deals with the macro issues of the ageing and describes how design thinking could contribute to a more age integrated society and transform a notional burden into an opportunity.

The article concludes with seven lines of thought:

1. The granularity of old age: Most of the myths and notions about aging arise due to a lack of understanding of the variations amongst the elderly.
2. The notion of retirement: The current structure of retirement is heavily drawn from the industrial era where workers were worn out from decades of hard labour and had a lower life expectancy.
3. Cultural variations: Cultural and social variations in the aging process are detected in different countries.
4. The design challenge: Design thinking when used at a strategic level could transform these key insights into affirmative action.
5. Vision of age integration: A big aspect of caring for the elderly involves integration with the rest of society. Providing a network of care that transcends age is a powerful tool in this process.
6. The universal approach: Adopting the principles of universal design is already a big step closer to creating a more elderly friendly design.
7. Service opportunities: The aging society of fers new opportunities in the service economy. Many services have the unique quality of being able to plug the gaps in the social structure. Services can act as agents of support by introducing new patterns of behaviours, bridging accessibility gaps and inducing motivations.

In conclusion:
“Quality of life in old age moves beyond mere creature comforts to having a healthy, secure and meaningful life. Healthcare and housing is just one facet of their needs. Building a sense of inclusiveness and dignity should be a public initiative as much as a social responsibility.”

The 330-page report takes a comprehensive look at the way Britons use new and old media and reveals a nation in love with its media, gadgets and hi-tech gear.

16% of Britons aged 65+ spend 42 hours per month online - more than any other age group.

Another striking result, especially for traditional-media executives looking for their future customers, is that “kids are abandoning old and not-so-old media for the new. Whereas two years ago 59% of those aged 8 to 15 regularly watched videos, only 38% do now. Two years ago 61% regularly played video games compared with 53% today. Most are abandoning stand-alone media, such as DVDs, and turning instead to media such as the internet and in particular social-networking websites. The trend seems to accelerate as children move into their teenage years. Nearly two-thirds of children between the ages of 12 and 15 use the internet, compared with 41% of those aged 8 to 11.”

- Read BBC article
- Read Economist article

Founded by 3 leading Internet associations, including the Internet Society, FING is a collective and open research and development project which focuses on tomorrow’s Internet’s uses, applications and services.

FING views the future Internet as not only more reliable, mobile, fast, user-friendly - but as a different Internet: the disappearing Internet, in which broadband, mobile, pervasive, intelligent technologies make it possible to focus on the user’s needs, lifestyles and desires. We believe this technological change will unleash a new innovation cycle in applications and services. We also believe that the Internet’s decentralised design should and can scale to the next generation and is innovation’s and competition’s best chance for the future.

FING intends to help corporations, public agencies, education and research organizations be at the forefront of this new cycle. Through collective and networked intelligence, creativity and experimentation, Fing seeks to improve the efficiency of the innovation process, as well as reduce risks for all involved parties.

FING:

• publishes Internet Actu, a weblog and media which is read by 70,000 professionals;
• supports several workgroups and communities;
• organises visits to research labs and innovative companies throughout the world;
• publishes papers, books and reports;
• moderates or takes part in foresight exercises such as Ci’Num, the Digital Civilizations Forum;
• organises international conferences and industry events such as Mobile Monday France, or the “Crossroads of Possibilities” which showcases very early-stage innovative projects.

FING is networked with other, similar initiatives throughout Europe and the world. FING’s CEO, Daniel Kaplan, is a member of the European Commission’s eEurope Advisory Group.

FING currently has more than 165 members, including: BNP Paribas, EDF, Ericsson, Eutelsat, France Telecom/Orange, Galeries Lafayette, HP, INRIA, Microsoft, the Ministries of Education and Research, Toshiba, etc.

Some browsing around led me to interesting initiatives such as:

• Villes 2.0 (Cities 2.0), which is aimed at helping traditional urban stakeholders (companies, institutions, social entities) and “digital actors” foresee urban and mobile transformations and work together on them. There are four focus areas: the augmented city (related to ubiquitous computing); my own city (which is about personalisation and user-centredness); service innovation (and co-creation); and social sustainability.
   
• Active Identities, which is focused on identifying and stimulating the necessary actions to make the active management of digital identities into a resource, a tool that allows users to control their lives and realise their projects, a factor of confidence, and a source of innovation and value creation.
   
• Innovative Interfaces, a new project which ponders the question how the fact that our direct and indirect interactions with machines and digital services, which keeps on getting better, simpler and easier, can help remove certain barriers for people with “difficulties” (e.g. non-users).
   
• Active and autonomous living until 90

Also of interest are a series of videos including this presentation by Fing CEO Daniel Kaplan at LIFT07, as well as a huge amount of rather unorganised project videos from the Crossroads of Possibilities project.

Stewart Smith, head of Communic8, also says that he had found no network operator prepared to partner with the makers of the Emporia Life handset.

The £170 ($320, €230) handset features easy-to-use buttons, a simple display and a large red panic switch on its back.

Charities for the elderly have accused the mobile industry of ageism.

Austrian-based manufacturer Emporia are aiming the phone at the over-50s but, despite a large potential market, has found it a hard sell in the UK.

“We are in discussion with a number of retailers, but particularly when it comes to the mobile networks, they find it hard to see where this kind of device fits within their brand,” said Mr Smith, managing director of the UK distributor Communic8.

- Read full story
- Watch video news report
- Watch video of pensioners testing the phone

Responding to the needs of Europe’s growing ageing population, the Commission has today adopted a European Action Plan for “Ageing Well in the Information Society”. This Action Plan is accompanied by a new joint European research programme raising to over €1bn the research investment on information and communications technologies (ICT) targeted at improving the life of older people at home, in the workplace and in society in general.

These new EU initiatives will contribute to allowing older Europeans to stay active for longer and live independently. Together they promise a triple win for Europe: improved quality of life and social participation for older people in Europe, new business opportunities for Europe’s industries, and more efficient and more personalised health and social services.

“Europe’s ageing population is a challenge for our job market, and its social and health systems. But it is also an economic and social opportunity. ICT will provide new and more accessible products and services that meet the needs of older people,” said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for the Information Society and Media. “These two initiatives will mobilise digital technologies that will improve the daily lives and social participation of older people, and create new opportunities for Europe’s industry.”

By 2020 25% of the EU’s population will be over 65. Spending on pensions, health and long-term care is expected to increase by 4-8% of GDP in coming decades, with total expenditures tripling by 2050. However, older Europeans are also important consumers with a combined wealth of over €3000 billion.

ICT will increasingly allow older people to stay active and productive for longer; to continue to engage in society with more accessible online services; and to enjoy a healthier and higher quality of life for longer.

The majority of older people do not yet enjoy the benefits of the digital age - low cost communications and online services that could support some of their real needs - since only 10% use the internet. Severe vision, hearing or dexterity problems, frustrate many older peoples’ efforts (21% of the over 50s) to engage in the information society.

In response, today’s Action Plan aims at:

• overcoming technical and regulatory barriers to market development, through market assessments and by facilitating the exchange of best practice between Member States;
• raising awareness, and building consensus via stakeholder cooperation in 2007 and the establishment of a best practice internet portal,
• accelerating take-up through, for example, a set of pilot projects and a European award scheme for smart homes and independent living applications;
• boosting research and innovation by immediately supporting a joint public-private research programme dedicated to “ambient assisted living”. It aims to foster the emergence of innovative, ICT-based products, services and systems for Europe’s ageing population.

Read more

(via eGov monitor)

Selling technology to technophobes may not seem like smartest business strategy, but when the technophobes in question are the 100 million baby boomers and seniors in the U.S., bridging the technology gap starts to look like a real market opportunity.

For mobile-industry veteran Arlene Harris, the opportunity was too good to pass up. Harris is the mastermind behind Jitterbug, a company launched last October that combines a unique mobile phone (designed by Jitterbug and manufactured by Samsung) with a suite of services designed to meet the needs of older users. Because Jitterbug controlled both the product and service design, it’s able to deliver a seamless, innovative cross-channel experience, a rarity in the mobile-phone industry.

Providing familiar touchstones to ease the mobile-phone experience became a major part of Jitterbug’s design after early research showed that older users found conventions like signal strength meters unfamiliar and confusing. Instead, when you open a Jitterbug phone it emits—get this—a dial tone.

Read full story

Alzheimer100 is a part of Designs of the time, a year long project based in the North East and lead by John Thackara (recent interview: En / It), exploring how design can make a positive difference to our daily lives.

People with dementia, their carers, service providers and experts in the field lead the project. The groups work together to share their experiences, thoughts and ideas via videos, photographs, journals, web logs and other means and design new services and products.

The aim is that over the course of the Dott 07 year, and beyond, an innovative pilot will be produced that will improve the lives of those with dementia and their carers through design. The possible outcomes are very broad, however, and will not necessarily focus on the new, with existing services also being scrutinised to see how they could be added to or improved.

“Our work focused on a number of areas, including ethnographic research, following members home to understand how they managed their healthcare, how they made plan selections, how they budget and claim for health finance expenses,” says Chris Nicholson, Humana’s director, integrated customer experience. The goal, he adds, was “to provide members with the relevant information that they need to make those decisions.”

During 2004, the carrier focused on determining which communication vehicles would best serve that goal, guided by four principles, according to Nicholson. The first principle, consolidation, focused on inventorying existing communications, such as periodic mass mailings, in order to concentrate them into one vehicle, he explains. The second, personalisation, sought to increase the communications’ relevance and impact by making it specific to the member. The third, distillation, aimed to synthesise the relevant information into language intelligible to the lay-reader. And the fourth, and perhaps most important, according to Nicholson, was actionability — giving members clear direction as to what they needed to do with the information.

As Humana put prototypes before focus groups toward the end of 2004 through early 2005, it set about seeking the means to deliver the final product. “We realised we didn’t have tools to provide the kind of personalised communications that our members were asking for,” Nicholson recalls. The carrier evaluated about a dozen vendor solutions, as well as two tools already in-house, he relates. “We were trying to get a good assessment in terms of cost, flexibility, scalability and integration with our print systems and [data] outputs,” Nicholson says. “We were looking for a broad solution that not only fit in the print space but also the Web.”

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Speakers were Bill Moggridge, founder of IDEO; BJ Fogg, founder of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab; John Paczkowski, senior editor of AllThingsD.com of the Wall Street Journal; and Tim Plowman of Intel’s Digital Health Group.

The forum, which took place on 4 April, was presented by the MIT Club of Northern California, the Stanford Center for Longevity, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, and SmartSilvers Alliance.

EETimes Online has posted an excellent article about the presentation entitled “Ease-of-use crisis: Designers or ‘feature creeps’?”.

A panel of experts on “ease of use” whose experience ranges from technology design to behavioral psychology agreed rather ruefully Wednesday (April 4) that one of the most complicated challenges in electronic engineering is simplicity.

Their conclusions echoed the irony of one audience member—an attorney with Silicon Valley law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati—who defined “technology” as “something that doesn’t quite work yet.”

Panelist B.J. Fogg, a psychologist who founded Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab, summarized the issue by saying that “every possibility you add to an interface increases your likelihood of failure” in the marketplace.

Tim Plowman, a professor who has studied human behavior at the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Clara University, addressed the basic issue of convincing designers to devise interfaces that are intuitively accessible to users of all ages and levels of technical sophistication. “It is much, much harder,” he said, “to achieve simplicity in interaction design.”

Bill Moggridge, founder of IDEO, a firm that designs user-centered products and services, noted that older users are slower to adapt to electronic device complexity because older users are more complex themselves, with “more things on our minds.” He said, “Among us wrinklies, it’s less likely that we’ll get it right away, unlike younger people.”

Read full story

The academy chose to immediately bolster enthusiasm through a socially-oriented project, focused on care for the elderly, thus enabling the various departments — photography, graphic design, product design, video, and communication & multimedia design — to learn new user-centred approaches through concrete, interdisciplinary and experience-focused activities.

Carefree living for the elderly

The Media & Design Academy started the year with a project that allowed students from various disciplines to collaborate creatively on a social topic: the living conditions of the elderly. This topic is highly relevant as our population is getting older and today’s youth will have to confront an increasingly ageing population both in their personal and professional lives. We therefore need insights in the needs, aspirations and capacities of the elderly.

The school used an experience design methodology to gather these insights: “Rather than figure out how to design for your audience, design for yourself after becoming like your audience!” (Dishman in Laurel, 2002). Objects and services are not seen as static products but as embodied experiences in a context, that differ depending on the person who engages in the interaction. To create a succesful and pleasing experience, the designer needs to learn how to see a context or an environment through the eyes of the user.

(My translation from the project website)

The students first inserted themselves in the environment of the elderly, helped by theatrical improvisation sessions. This lead to a series of innovative and creative designs and future scenarios aimed at visualising this carefree living of the elderly.

A short English-language vision document on design research is also available for download (pdf, 83 kb) from the lab’s website.

The TRIL Centre is a collection of research projects addressing the physical, cognitive and social consequences of ageing, all informed by ethnographic research and supported by a shared pool of knowledge and engineering resources.

The researchers will aim to develop technologies that can allow the elderly to continue to live independently and at home. They’ll focus on technologies that can improve social health and community engagement for older people, detect and prevent falls in the home, and help people with memory loss to remain independent.

Combined, Intel and the Industrial Development Agency Ireland, a government organization that seeks investments from overseas companies, are contributing $30 million over three years to the initiative, which will include collaboration with three Irish universities and 50 to 100 new researchers at Intel in Dublin.

Read full story (InfoWorld)
Read press release

More on TRIL’s use of ethnography:

By direct investigation and observation, ethnographic research of older people in their day to day lives and their interactions with carers and the healthcare system will equip the TRIL Centre teams with a real-world understanding of what old people need, what they find acceptable and how their quality of life can be improved.

By observing people ‘in their natural habitat’, the use of ethnography in technology research helps to identify what they find easy, what they find difficult, what would assist them day to day and how their needs can be supported by judicious interventions and devices. Ethnography uses anthropological and observational techniques to answer questions such as ‘what do people really want’, and ‘would a particular product find mass acceptance’. But it also reflects a philosophical foundation, particularly in respect of the TRIL Centre research programme, that research must have real-world impact, must change people’s lives and must have value and application beyond the laboratory.

The work of the ethnographic team based at NUI Galway will inform the design, implementation and usability of new technologies developed for older people. Ethnographic information provides guidance and feedback to the engineers and scientists who design and produce the new technologies and to the older people who use the new technologies. The Irish Centre of Social Gerontology (ICSG) will unite the various engineering and design strands of the TRIL Centre through enhanced multidisciplinary information systems that link design to application, with a personalised focus on the experiences of older people in their own space and place.

The age old problem of setting a video recorder still exists for one in three Brits, even though they have been in the mainstream for 27 years.

DVDs offer a more complex challenge with four in five (77%) not feeling confident to set one to record.

Also, mobile phones are now ubiquitous, yet many remain baffled by their features. The majority, almost two thirds (61%), use only four features on their mobile phone - calls, text messages, alarm clock and camera - while two fifths don’t even know if their mobile phone has a camera function.

Read full story

(via textually.org)

User-centred design
The central premise of user-centred design is that the best-designed products and services result from understanding the needs of the people who will use them. User-centred designers engage actively with end-users to gather insights that drive design from the earliest stages of product and service development, right through the design process. Psychologist Alison Black gives an insight into how a user-centred approach can lead to innovative products and services that deliver real consumer benefit.

Experience design
Experience design concentrates on moments of engagement between people and brands, and the memories these moments create. For customers, all these moments of corporate experience combine to shape perceptions, motivate their brand commitment and influence the likelihood of repurchase in the future. Brand experience has the power to engender a greater degree of empathy, trust and loyalty from both customers and employees. Ralph Ardill of the Brand Experience Consultancy gives an overview of how experience design delivers new insights into how brands are perceived.
 
Unfortunately the experience design section is strongly brand-focused and therefore company-centric, rather than people-centric, and the write-up is seriously criticised by Peter Merholz, president of Adaptive Path, in a reaction to this post entitled “Experience design is not about brands“: “For ‘experience design’ to truly succeed as a discipline, it will need to distinguish itself from brand strategy and design, and demonstrate its distinct value as a contributor to business. Unfortunately, the Design Councils attempt at definition simply muddles things further.“

Other sections that caught my eye:

• Roger Coleman explains how inclusive design ensures that goods, services and environments are accessible to more people.
• The ability of trends research to generate vital insights into customers’ and users’ future needs is making the practice increasingly important for all sectors. Trends expert James Woudhuysen explores the issues
• The UK services sector is growing, but service design and its management are often poorly planned, argues Bill Hollins. This article reveals how companies can gain competitive advantage by applying design techniques when creating and improving their services.
• Interaction design is the key skill used in creating an interface through which information technology can be manipulated, writes Nico Macdonald. As products and services are increasingly being created using information technology, interaction design is likely to become the key design skill of this century.

The research was commissioned by the UK Office of Science and Innovation’s Horizon Scanning Centre, and complied by futures researchers, Outsights-Ipsos Mori partnership and the US-based Institute for the Future (IFTF).

The papers look forward at emerging trends in science, health and technology. As well as assessing the current state of thinking they also examine the possible implications for society.

SIGMA SCAN

The Sigma Scan is set up as a database of 146 issue papers that provide a brief description of a particular trend or development and a projection of how, given a range of possible conditions, it may unfold in the future and influence the course of events over the next 50 years. The site navigation is rather idiosyncratic and not very user-friendly. But in fact, it is not so bad: you just click on one of the five themes, and on the next page simply hit the “search” button. Here are some of the papers that caught my interest (in no particular order):

• Come together: Virtual communities, multiple identities?
  New forms of communities are emerging, enabled by new technology and drawn together by shared interests from across the globe. As membership becomes more common, we may see people adopting multiple identities in the convergence of virtual and real worlds. The phenomenon has the potential to unleash huge creative forces and foster social capital. However it may also challenge legislators as it permits new forms of criminal behaviour.
   
• From consumer to creator: The content revolution and the rise of the creative class
  Consumers are harnessing media previously beyond their grasp technically or economically to express themselves creatively and to earn money. This has come about through innate creativity; accessibility of equipment (eg digital cameras); means to manipulate content (eg easy-to-use software); virtual sharing communities. Creative content may grow exponentially, spawning a new ‘creative class’. Consumer behaviour may change from plain consumption to customisation or co-production.
   
• The digitisation of knowledge: The wholesale transfer of conventional knowledge media to online sources
  Forms of knowledge and the means of sustaining them for public good are moving online at an exponential rate. The continuation of this online trend may herald radical changes in learning and work. It may or may not imply radically different patterns of knowledge use.
   
• Technology to empower the greying generation
  Currently, we design for a ‘youth-obsessed society’. It is often thought by designers that older people have little interest in design and in many situations the issue becomes not one of tastes but of needs. However, information technologies are becoming ever more essential for participating in modern life. Potentially they provide a valuable means of keeping people mentally active and in touch with friends and family, as well as providing a convenient means of doing shopping and obtaining advice. Yet computers can be very hard for older people to use, leading to their exclusion from this central aspect of society. There is likely to be high demand for significant redesign of user interfaces – for example, the introduction of speech recognition or the improvement of haptic (touch-sensitive) interfaces.
   
• Sensory transformation: life in a cloud of data
  Over the next ten years, increasing numbers of computational devices may be embedded in physical objects, places, and even human beings, that would provide considerable amounts of additional information about their environment. Access to this information may enhance our sensory experience, but also stretch our sensory capacity beyond current capabilities. Information technologies (e.g. ambient displays and so-called “calm” technologies) look likely to play a major role as a medium and mediator of social and professional communication. Also, by 2015 displays and interaction may be ubiquitous and provide rich sensory experiences. High-resolution and haptic (or force-feedback) displays, that allow users to feel and touch virtual objects with a high degree of realism, could become more immersive and lifelike.
   
• Virtual democracy?: Political activity goes online
  Democratic politics may increasingly be conducted online. Ease of access may allow citizens to virtually interact with political representatives eg mass referenda. Vast numbers may be able to register their opinions on topical issues almost instantaneously. This may revive the democratic process but also prompt debate about the nature of democracy itself, increasing pressure for constitutional reform and the creation of new outlets for participation in public life.
   
• The end of ownership?: Ubiquitous leasing of manufactured goods
  Virtually all fixed assets may be leased to businesses and consumers rather than be owned by them. Leasing could extend from property and large machinery (e.g. all vehicles might be leased) to smaller appliances (e.g. computer hardware, furniture).
   
• Innovation communities: Open-source, cooperative R&D
  The information economy allows technology development through global research and development, but high costs for specific applications sometimes make it risky, especially in competitive industries. Private and public sectors may combine resources to develop solutions more quickly, efficiently and mitigate risk. Internet and collaborative tools may facilitate this, with open source model allowing savings in costs.
   
• Technology’s child: the advent of young, tech-literate commercial talent
  The economy may become dependent on those who are highly technologically skilled. While some workers may be immigrants, the majority are likely to be have grown up with the technology and been through a work focused, IT-oriented education. Without re-education or re-skilling, declining demand for unskilled labour may depress their earning potential and prospects. The knowledge economy’s increasing importance may mean increasing inequality.
   
• From information to insight: Intelligent support and the conquest of information overload
  Computer agents equipped with artificial intelligence may automatically scan, filter and process information, reporting it to users in various targeted forms to aid business and personal life. Able to monitor, analyse, learn and understand natural languages in real time, these systems may help people become highly information-literate, process vast information quantities effectively from multiple inputs, and enable faster informed choices. This may boost productivity.

DELTA SCAN

Also the Delta Scan works as a forum for scanning the science and technology horizon over the next 50 years. The forum contains a hundred outlook pages covering a wide range of scientific disciplines and technologies. The Delta Scan was produced by the Institute for the Future, a Silicon Valley think-tank, as part of a project for the Horizon Scanning Centre of the United Kingdom’s Office of Science and Innovation. The database is hosted by the Stanford University Foresight Research group, housed in the university’s Wallenberg Center. Also here a selection of papers:

• Ambient displays at the human-computer interface
  Developments in display technology may increase the repertoire of interactions between users and digital media by increasing the number of sites for ‘ambient’ displays.
   
• Computing on the human platform
  Interaction between personal electronic products, mediated by human skin, may lead to new, and greater use of, invasive applications.
   
• The end of cyberspace
  The concept of cyberspace as a distinct geographical entity has influenced the way we think about information technology, e-commerce, copyright, and high-tech products. New technologies are revealing a more complex relation between data-space and the real world, with consequences in all these areas.
   
• New technologies for cooperation
  New technologies for cooperation and a better understanding of cooperative strategies may create a new capacity for rapid, ad hoc, and distributed decision making.
   
• The rise of proactive and context-aware computing
  Proactive and context-aware computer systems that anticipate users’ needs and perform tasks in a timely and context-sensitive manner may begin to have an impact within the next 10 years.
   
• Human brain: the next frontier
  The next 20 years are likely to witness a revolution in our understanding of the human brain, with implications for virtually every domain of human activity, from mental health to software design and academic performance and real-life decision- making.
   
• Artificial extensions of human capabilities
  A wide range of technologies, from pharmaceuticals to implantable devices, and specialised cognitive or behavioural training (leading to regional brain activation through functional imaging), will enable extensions of human bodies, senses, and capabilities. This will lead to redefinition of various boundaries: natural versus artificial, alive versus dead, individual versus collective.
   
• The rise of applied anthropology
  The rise of applied anthropology is likely to challenge the traditional structure of the discipline.
   
• Studying human behaviour in cyberspace
  Cyber-ethnography, defined as the study of online interaction, is likely to become an important area of anthropological research as more and more human activities are conducted in cyberspace.

“With 35 million elderly people in America, “the old, old” — those over 85 — are now considered the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population. While medical advances have enabled an unprecedented number of Americans to live longer and healthier lives, this new longevity has also had unintended consequences. For millions of Americans, living longer also means serious chronic illness and a protracted physical decline that can require an immense amount of care, often for years and sometimes even decades. Yet just as the need for care is rising, the number of available caregivers is dwindling. With families more dispersed than ever and an overburdened healthcare system, many experts fear that we are on the threshold of a major crisis in care.”

Miri Navasky and Karen O’Connor, producers of the American investigative TV programme Frontline, investigated the crisis and explored the new realities of aging in America in the 60-minute feature “Living Old”, which aired yesterday evening on PBS (the public broadcaster in the US).

The full programme can be viewed online in Quicktime and Windows Media. The website also contains extended interviews; profiles of the featured individuals and families; an interactive map featuring the demographics of America’s elderly, and the comparative costs of nursing homes, assisted living and home care; facts and stats; special readings; and information where to go for further help.

Frontline’s Living Old website

Read also this interesting reflection by Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times. An excerpt: “What’s distinctive about old age now, and what makes the lives of the so-called old old interesting, is what this generation of 80- and 90-somethings and centurions brings to it. To that end I wish someone had asked the people in this program about Europe, Ellis Island, cars, the Roaring Twenties, cocaine, the Depression, the Dust Bowl, ghettos, the war, the New Deal, polio, civil rights, socialism, washing machines, swimming pools, the Kennedy assassination, the lunar landing. And what, if anything, they make of the Internet.