Technologies for Active Aging Have the Potential to be Problematic

Technologies for Active Aging by Andrew Sixsmith and Gloria Gutman is a collection of essays which critically explore the needs of elders and the implications for design and technology solutions from the rapidly expanding technology industry in order to allow our societies to handle the globally increasing proportion of older peoples in our populations. Technologies for Active Aging emphasizes diversity, using a variety of perspectives, from elders, to caregivers, to medical and technological professionals, using non-technical language so as to be applicable to non-professionals with an interesting in geriatric care.

One of the first issues that Sixsmith in Intelligent systems for assessing age-related changes using home-based technologies. While home based monitoring systems have the potential to improve health outcomes for seniors aging at home, they also risk some very serious privacy violations. In “Surveillance, Power, and Everyday Life,” David Lyon writes that ICTS have given surveillance a constantly growing and inescapable power over our daily lives. This definitely rings true in the case of home based monitoring systems, where previously seniors would prefer home care because they had increased privacy and autonomy. In order to monitor and provide the best of care for seniors, we may have to go against “Do no harm” policies in order to monitor their most private functions. Even if the the people participating in home based monitoring systems are volunteering to be placed under those systems, the idea that we will be monitored every day of the rest of our lives lines up very well with Lyon’s theories of the “end of privacy,” in which the we will no longer have any privacy because every aspect of our life is somehow monitored, voluntarily or involuntarily (2007).

On the other side of the home based monitoring system, there is a similar potential for things to go awry. While jobs could be created for those who are monitoring in home systems, the structure of the medical system would probably drastically change as a result. With one person able to monitor potentially dozens of elders based on how automated the system is, we could see a vast shift in the job market for health care, potentially displacing a lot of current workers for technology. Although home-based monitoring systems still need a human element to monitor and administer care when health takes a turn for the worse. Additionally, since the current homecare industry has a proportionally high number of minority workers, systems that automate their jobs have the potential to greatly harm members of minority groups. The potential for changes in the make-up of the work industry call to mind Pellow and Park’s piece, The Silicon Valley of Dreams: The Political Economy of Work and Health, in which minority groups were severely disadvantaged in the technology industry and even exposed to harmful chemicals but forced to do their jobs because they needed to make a living wage (Pellow and Park 2002). If the technology and health industries overlap in this way, it fosters an environment with the potential to be harmful to its employees. Unlike in the tech industry where Pellow and Park describe the upper management of the companies exploiting workers covering up their injustices in order to turn more of a profit and defend themselves instead of their workers, the health industry has traditionally been good about providing adequate protection for their workers, however, when the industries overlap it will be interesting to see how the two coexist. Hopefully, the health industry sets a better precedent for the technology and the two coexisting can benefit both the people they aim to serve and the workers within the industries themselves.

One more potential problem with the proposals outlines in Sixsmith and Gutman’s book is the sustainability of home based monitoring systems. Ideally many of the physical devices used to conduct home based monitoring would be reused and recycled, however, in order to give the best possible care, the companies providing home based monitoring would have to upgrade their systems quite often. As a result this could lead to a great deal of digital waste, which could in turn end up waste dumps and subsequently cause environmental problems. In Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media Jonathan Sterne writes about “convivial technology”  "Conviviality" implies ease of use, flexibility in implementation, harmony with the environment, and ease of integration into truly democratic forms of social life (Sterne 2007). Sterne argues that we need to develop convivial technology, which allows us to work in harmony with the environment so that we can create a sustainable society alongside our technological development (2007). Unless this can be achieved, another excuse to integrate technology into our daily lives may just harm us more than it would help us.

Technologies for Active Aging has in idealistic view of the future and offers some great solutions for moving forward and advancing the health outcomes of our seniors and the technology and health care industries respectively. However, the advancement of technology has the potential to be problematic and unless those problems can be resolved, the ideas that Sixsmith and Gutman put forward have the potential to do more harm than good.

Sources:

Lyon, David. 2007. Surveillance, Power, and Everyday Life.

Pellow. D, and Park, L. 2002. The Silicon Valley of Dreams: The Political Economy of Work and Health.
Sterne, Jonathan. 2007. Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media.