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IYR1T: Hey Kids, Get on My Lawn!


IF YOU READ ONE THING, MAKE IT

Who should we blame? How about 19th century doctors in the West, who believed that human bodies were batteries, their energy "consumed over the course of a lifetime of physical activity, never to be replenished." (The fix? At the first sign of aging, do as little as possible. LOL.) How about our old pals the marketers? Maybe "Del Webb, developer of the Arizona retirement mecca Sun City," who invented the concept "the golden years?" Joseph F. Coughlin's piece in MIT Technology Review makes us long for a lengthy, angrier, Madness and Civilization-esque manifesto about why old age ain't nothing but a number. Until then, ponder the yucktastic feedback loop he's trying to break as director of the MIT AgeLab: designers designing for a made-up audience they're (unconsciously?) biased against.