How Might We Make the World a Better Place to Grow Old In?
Here’s the thing. I don’t like being thought of as old. Old, in our culture, tends to mean frail, slow, outdated, invisible. That’s why I started Midcentury Modern. It was a sly way of referring to my demographic — the Debbies, Kathys and Susans of the world, born in the middle of the last century — and creating a place where I could begin to comprehend the reality of growing older while railing against a culture I felt was marginalizing me.
But a funny thing happened on the way to old age denial. Not only did my parents start to get old in ways that I couldn’t have imagined just a few years before — making the problems of aging both real and personal — but I also started meeting people in the “aging space.” People at Encore, Next Avenue, AARP and finally Senior Planet — an organization that’s bought into my dream to apply hackathon culture to a whole new demographic: the old.
So for the past month of so, I’ve been working with a Senior Planet team on a project we call Hack Aging. Our hackathon will be next Tuesday, June 27, in New York City, and I’m proud to say the room will be filled with hackers spanning about five generations. The youngest, I know, is 13. The oldest? Well, it’ll be someone who’s been getting a break on movie tickets for a few decades.
And we’re not just talking about how we might get seniors up to speed on Twitter. We’re talking about hacking the huge vital issues that have arisen out of the amazing progress in human life expectancy.
Issues like:
- How might we reinvent the home (the house, the apartment building, the neighborhood) for people not living in nuclear families — in ways that can build community and interdependence?
- How might we create support for older people whose children live far away — or who never had children in the first place?
- How might we tap into the wisdom of olders, both to make their lives more meaningful and provide a valuable long view for society?
- How might we celebrate the gift of longevity rather than dread it?
- How might we flex our political muscle to protect people with pre-existing conditions?
- How might we borrow ideas from the sharing economy to deal with some of these issues?
- And how might we provide solace for a population whose members are dying? (Maybe we should ask those who lived through AIDS in the 1980s.)
All the seats at Hack Aging have been filled, but we’re still looking to widen the conversation. We can come up with plenty of #HowMightWe questions to suggest to our participants next week, but we’d like your ideas. How might you help us hack aging?
So think about it, and once you come up with some, click on the little thought bubble 💭 at the end of this story and write a response. Or suggest your own #HowMightWe on Twitter or Facebook. We’ll make sure to share the best ones.
And follow us on YouTube on June 27 from 10 to 11 am ET and from 4 to 6 pm ET.
