Age 3.0 Aging in the City – Concordia University, November 1

From age friendly cities, to smart cities to sustainable cities, how we live, work, play, engage and negotiate the urban environment is on the public agenda. On November 1, 2017, Age 3.0: Aging in the city will explore the multiple intersections of innovation, technologies and aging, and bring together voices from the university, Montreal-based community groups, and local businesses to explore what it means to grow older together in the city.

For full details, visit our project page: https://actproject.ca/act/age-3-0/

Annual ACT meeting at the University of Ottawa

The fourth annual ACT meeting will take place from October 13 to 15 at the University of Ottawa, Canada. The meeting is organized by local co-applicant Martine Lagacé, and brings together some 40 researchers from the ACT project, from ten different countries.

This year, we celebrate the midway point of the project, look back on what we have accomplished so far, and look ahead to the future as the priorities for the next few years begin to take shape. The meeting will begin with a keynote address by Marcel Mérette of the University of Ottawa, and a roundtable discussion featuring local and ACT researchers, and a representative from the National Research council. Both the keynote and the round-table discussion address the theme of “Bridging research and public policy: questions of aging and technology“.

The meeting continues with a working session on data management for partnerships and another on building and sharing pedagogical tools. A number of ACT researchers will take turns presenting their research to the group, and we will also provide the team with an overview of our midterm report. The tentative meeting agenda can be downloaded here.

Our Fitbits, our (aging)selves? Digital self-tracking and embodied aging

At the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung surprised business-watchers with a shift in market development plans. Expected to focus on robots, they instead announced a focus on wearable health devices, such as fitness trackers, believing that (according to their CEO) “an aging society will help this market segment grow more quickly”. This article explores the different ways that self-tracking technologies depending on age. For older adults, conversations ten toward mitigating risks, and identifying onsets of, age-related decline.