"Is Technology the Solution to Better Aging Futures?" - Barbara Marshall Delivers Creamer Lecture
6:30 PM
Kinsella Auditorium
McCain Hall
Barbara Marshall will speak about technology and aging as part of the Dr. T. LeRoy Creamer Memorial Lecture in Gerontology on October 28 at 6:30 PM in the Kinsella Auditorium, McCain Hall.
Is technology the solution to better aging futures?
Optimism about the potential of digital and mobile technologies has increasingly shaped visions of aging futures. As societies with aging populations worry about an impending crisis of care, a host of technologies – including self-tracking devices to optimize ‘healthy’ aging, telehealth innovations, ‘smart’ home technologies, ambient assisted living technologies, companion robots and AI-driven diagnostics – are proposed as solutions.
This talk will cast a critical eye on some of the ways that technological solutionism frames the ‘problem’ of aging and encourage thinking about alternative visions of aging futures that might more imaginatively see technology as contributing to intergenerationality, care and connection.
About the Speaker
Barbara L. Marshall is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada, where she was a founding member of the Trent Centre for Aging and Society and recipient of the Distinguished Research Award.
She has written widely in the areas of gender, sexuality, embodiment, ageing and technologies. Her research over the past decade has focused on the ways that digital technologies have shaped, and are shaped by, experiences of aging. Her research has been supported by both the Canadian Institute for Health Research and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and has included collaborations with researchers in the UK, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden. Her most recent book is Socio-Gerontechnology: Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology (Routledge, 2021), a volume co-edited with Alexander Peine, Wendy Martin and Louis Neven.
Barb continues to research and write while enjoying retirement on the beautiful west coast of Canada. Her current work draws on several collaborative projects exploring aging bodies, digital technologies, artificial intelligence and sociotechnical imaginaries of aging futures.