My posting has been light since my 94 year old father-in-law has been living with us — after a fall and before he transitions to assisted living — and now my 81 year old dad is going in for major colon surgery tomorrow. I’m honored to be serving these two men and have been doing so with a lightness in my heart and a lot of love and expect it to consume my summer.
This time serving our dad’s has been a profound learning experience on many levels. Since I write about technology and the meaning behind it, I’m not going to leap into the spiritual aspects, a discussion about honoring our elders or even how I’m worried I won’t capture their stories on audio or video, but instead about the macro trends of a graying world.
An experience like mine makes me think deeply about mortality, aging, and my work (Internet and Web centric management consulting) and what it means when a HUGE part of the Internet-centric market are Seniors with the time, inclination and interest — not to mention a higher net worth than any generation in history — embrace the Internet. All of us in the Web/Enterprise 2.0 game need to figure out how to cater to this group of folks.
This is NOT just a US-centric phenomena…it’s a global graying one. The National Institute of Aging produced this report Why Population Aging Matters: A Global Perspective which provides a succinct description of population trends that are transforming the world in fundamental ways. The report, using data from the United Nations, US Census Bureau, and the Statistical Office of the European Communities as well as regional surveys, identifies nine emerging trends in global aging and starts off like this:
We are aging—not just as individuals or communities but as a world. In 2006, almost 500 million people worldwide were 65 and older. By 2030, that total is projected to increase to 1 billion—1 in every 8 of the earth’s inhabitants. Significantly, the most rapid increases in the 65-and-older population are occurring in developing countries, which will see a jump of 140 percent by 2030.
Steve’s Social Stuff