Gustavo SugaharaFrom January 12th to February 19th the London Design Museum had an exhibition dedicated to the demographic change. Entitled “New Old” the exhibition looked at how design can help people lead fuller, healthier and more rewarding lives into old age.
The curator, Jeremy Myerson, a renowned academic dedicated to people-centred and inclusive design, could not be clearer about his perspective on the dominant perception about old-age:
Buddy Guy (80), Ronnie Wood (69) and Jonny Lang (35).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuEO1dCgzAU
Music is perhaps the best examples of the power of intergenerational partnerships. Enjoy!
Creativity and innovation are often seen as a monopoly of “the young”. Young persons are supposed to be naturally more prone to the novel simply because they are young. The main issue with that sort of assumption is that it is also frequently accompanied by the idea that older persons do not have the same “drive”, or even worst, cannot be innovative.
In this moving video from the New York Times, the awarded writer Norman Lear is the central point for a number of lessons about old age.
The video also captures another important problem:
In this video (published in February 2013) IBM presents their view for an “Age-Smart City”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDvW8R4BL0I
As usual, the perspective about ageing is pretty narrow. However, the video can be a good starting point for a discussion and brings some interesting examples.
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs recently published an interesting infochart about the World Population Ageing, reflecting the latest estimates and projections from the 2015 Revision of World Population Prospects.
“Virtually every country in the world will experience growth in the number and share of older persons in the population over the next 15 years || Between 2015 and 2030, the number of older persons — those aged 60 years or over — in the world is projected to grow by 56 per cent, from 901 million to more than 1.4 billion”
You can download the main demographic indicators for Norway here.
In honor of Henning Mankell, who passed away this Monday (October 5th) aged 67, we reproduce the introduction of an article he published in the New York Times about his experience in Mozambique.
“I CAME to Africa with one purpose: I wanted to see the world outside the perspective of European egocentricity. I could have chosen Asia or South America. I ended up in Africa because the plane ticket there was cheapest
The famous neurologist Olivier Sacks passed away last Sunday. His contributions to a more humane science have been praised all over the globe. Sacks had a very interesting and positive perspective on old age and he lived up to it.