Ageing Society - Digital Inclusion
Richard Wishart
Enterprise Architect | Deeptech Entrepreneur | Driving Innovation in Delivery Management
I will be at the Grand Challenge workshop tomorrow https://mydpip.com/ageing-society-grand-challenge-workshop/
This should be a really interesting event. Normally older people are forgotten about when it comes to designing technology solutions. Dont let this happen again !!
My plea would be - don't apply instant judgement. The aging society contains some very different cohorts and abilities and as a result suffer from very different discriminations and exclusions. Age discriminaton is a huge issue - especially for male professionals. Try applying for tech industry jobs over the age of 40 - good luck !! "no chance"
The most common mistake in the technology industry is diving straight into designing solutions without understanding the target audience (or audiences) and their specific needs and requirements. The IT industry itself is being completely disrupted by the 4th Industrial Revolution and the societal impacts of new technologies like AI, machine learning, autonomy and Spatial Computing. The societal changes will be massive and not to be underestimated.
It is important that solutions are designed for these new paradigms from day one.
The "Baby Boomer" generation have considerable skills and experience which needs to be engaged and applied to solving these problems. Information Technology has itself been disrupted. The Third Industrial Revolution was build on old fashioned IT which it no longer relevant - we need to reskill this generation
My plan is to produce lots of social media during and after the event using the hashtag #SeniorTech. My channels will be Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin. Please like, share and challenge
or - come along to the event and debate in person ( the old fashioned way !!)
Thank you
Richard Wishart (aged 64)
Trustee and volunteer at Elmswild
5 年I'll be at the workshop with my 70 year old friend who has been busy learning new skills alongside me at Sawtry Man Cave. Absolutely agree about the stupid ageism in the tech industry.? There is a constant reference to skills shortage in the IT industry but no-one will take on someone older than them. Perhaps because they are afraid we might actually know better than them. Most of my long and varied career has involved times when I had to tell co-workers they can't break the laws of physics, regardless of how inconvenience that might be. In the Internet industry mentioning Nyquist's Theorum just produces a stare of incomprehension as does the concept of database normalization. Explaining hysteresis as the main reason why aircon in an open plan office doesn't work simply leads to denial by the bean counters. Us oldies have a lot of experience to draw on - in case anyone cares, I can suggest viable ways of reversing global warming but I suspect the world would rather go to hell in a handcart than listen.