Technology

I had fun talking with KMO, creator of the geeky and wide-ranging C-Realm Podcast, and I think he did too.  Posted on Wednesday, May 8, the podcast covers a lot of interesting territory, from ageism in society to mortality, the U-shaped happiness curve, Ted Kaczynski’s ruminations on “primitive man,” and how KMO used to scare baby boomers into buying health insurance. 

This public project is the brainchild of Rachel Levy, an associate professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College, who was tired of hearing people say stuff like, “Just explain it like you would to your grandmother” or “That’s so easy my grandma could get it.” Levy started it “to counter the implication that grannies (gender + maternity + age) might not easily pick up on technical/theoretical ideas.” In other words, to challenge the mindless, ageist and sexist meme that older women are technically inept.

That’s the title of a short article in Forbes with a refreshing take on the multigenerational workplace. It steers clear of the standard fallacy that younger workers suffer when older ones stay on the job. It avoids the usual grumbling about baby boom's oversize footprint, emphasizing cross-cohort collaboration instead. And it points out that success in the workplace means adopting and adapting to the work habits of the Millennials (b. 1982-2004) who are moving into management now.

My poor kids. My son Murphy, a computer scientist, was talking last week about a system for archiving mathematics research on the web. "The problem is that a lot of the important papers are by people who are really old now," he said.  Uh oh.  The problem, I promptly pointed out, isn't age but technological illiteracy. While older scientists were indeed less likely to race to post their work online, it was wrong to assume so on the basis of age alone. He got it, with his characteristic sweet smile, though he probably felt more like kicking me.

On March 21-25 I attended the 12^th annual Age Boom Academy, a seminar for journalists covering “the myths and realities of aging in America.”  Billed as a Joint Program by the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and the Columbia Journalism School, it was sponsored by the Atlantic Philanthropies, AARP and The New York Times and took place at Columbia.  (Previous Age Booms were held at the International Longevity Center and hosted by Bob Butler, whom I sorely missed. It was terrific and I’ll be writing about it more substantively, but in the meanwhile here are some thoughts from assorted speakers that stuck with me.

On the one hand, this three-minute video of Esther and Bruce Huffman trying to figure out their new webcam is all about ineptitude.  On the other hand, it’s all about pleasure and perseverance, and the couple is perfectly happy that their granddaughter Emily posted it to YouTube, making them viral celebrities. No matter that it shows Bruce getting plenty frisky with Esther. "We're still trying to figure out how to work it," he says, "but we're having fun trying." I bet Esther nails it.

A mean-spirited Technology Review piece about a new Pew Internet study reports that “Social networking is for the young.” Compare that to the title of the survey itself: “65% of online adults use social networking sites.”

The Sunday New York Times business section recently offered a Barbie-sized photograph, front and back, of a college student strapped into an age-simulation jumpsuit called AGNES – the Age Gain Now Empathy System.  (Is there a special hell for tortured acronyms?) AGNES is packed with motion-impairing straps and pads, but the article isn’t about empathy for the arthritic.  It’s about the hard sell that marketers face in selling stuff to the over-65 set, “an unfashionable demographic group that might doom their product with young and hip spenders.”