History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
ESA Conference: Ageing Societies, New Sociology
September 23-26, 2003 in Murcia, Spain
Two streams of sessions of the
Research Network 18: Sociology of Science and Technology (SSTNET)
Convenors:
Raymund Werle: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Köln, Germany (werle@mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de)
Marja Häyrinen Alestalo: Dept. of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Finland (marja.alestalo@helsinki.fi)
Luísa Oliveira: DINÂMIA/ISCTE, Lisboa, Portugal (luisa.oliveira@iscte.pt)
Maarten Mentzel: 38 Johan de Wittstraat, 2334 AR Leiden, The Netherlands (m.a.mentzel@planet.nl)
Second Stream: New Technologies in Ageing Societies
Friday Sept. 26
09.00 - 11.00 session 7 (Campus de La Merced)
Chair Luísa Oliveira
7.2. Author(s): Mollenkopf, Heidrun/Kaspar, Roman
Institution: The German Centre for Research on Ageing at Heidelberg University
Professional Category:
City: Heidelberg
Country: Germany
E-mail: mollenkopf@dzfa.uni-heidelberg.de
ELDERLY PEOPLE AND NEW TECHNOLOGY - OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE CONDITIONS FOR USEFUL APPLICATIONS.
Technology has become one of the crucial "environments" of aging. The way elderly people lead their daily lives is facilitated or complicated by household technology, means of transportation, telephones, computers, electronic media, rehabilitation aids, and the increasing automation of services.
In this paper, we will present findings from a survey conducted in Germany in 1999 as part of an interdisciplinary research project at the Technical University of Berlin in cooperation with experts from the natural sciences, engineering, design, and social sciences. The aim was to investigate the needs and problems of older men and women with respect to technological appliances in their domestic environments and to take the appropriate steps for optimizing existing devices and developing innovative products. The underlying representative survey included a sample of 1,417 persons aged 55 years and older, stratified by age and gender, and living in private households in eastern and western Germany. Our focus will be on the availability and use of technical appliances in the domains of information and communication, on the one hand, and on the problems related in particular to new technologies, on the other. The results show that in order to enable older men and women to equally profit from new technologies, (1) objective as well as subjective barriers have to be minimized, and (2) technologies themselves have to be optimized in a way that they do not create new thresholds for active aging.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006