Ageing and Technology ─ Perspectives from the Social Sciences

The booming increase of the senior population has become a social phenomenon and a challenge to our societies, and technological advances have undoubtedly contributed to improve the lives of elderly citizens in numerous aspects. Technology, however, has largely ignored the ?human factor? and has often viewed the ageing individual as a malfunctioning machine whose deficiencies must be diagnosed - or as a set of limitations to be overcome by means of technological devices. This volume aims at focusing on the subjective needs and fears of human beings deriving from the development and use of technology: this change of perspective - taking the human being and not technology first - may help us to become more sensitive to the ambivalences involved in the interaction between humans and technology, as well as to adapt technologies to the people that created the need for its existence, thus contributing to improve the quality of life of senior citizens.

Emma Dominguez-Rue (Dr.) teaches in the Department of English at the University of Lleida, Catalunya (Spain). Linda Nierling (Dr.), is a researcher at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe (Germany).