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How can we understand aging through things that are measurable and displayed as numeric scores, trends, and algorithmic predictions? How do digital technologies like wearable fitness trackers (such as FitBits and Apple watches) and ambient monitoring systems (such as in-home sensor systems) transform bodily movements and functions into data? What happens to such data? In this talk, Dr. Marshall will explore how this data is translated into actionable knowledge, shaped by cultural narratives that view aging bodies as potentially modifiable and open to optimization but at the same time inevitably in decline and always at risk. What gets highlighted, muted or left out altogether in this translation? Who has agency in shaping the stories told by the data? How might data collected and aggregated from digital technologies influence the standards we set for what is considered ‘successful aging’? And what does this mean for older adults? While the use of digital data may detect, predict or even prevent some age-related concerns, this quantification may also restrict fuller and more diverse understandings of aging. Drawing on insights from several collaborative research projects, as well as extant work in the emerging field of socio-gerontechnology, Dr. Marshall will suggest some critical questions that might guide our thinking about aging, technology and digital culture.

Speaker Biography: Dr. Barbara Marshall was a member of the Sociology department at Trent University for 32 years, where she was a founding member of the Trent Centre for Aging and Society and was honoured with Trent’s Distinguished Research Award in 2006. Both her teaching and research have been in the areas of social theory, gender, sexuality, embodiment, aging and technologies. She continues to collaborate, research, and write while enjoying retirement on Vancouver Island. She is currently principal investigator on the SSHRC-funded project “Digital Culture and Quantified Aging” (with Stephen Katz and Wendy Martin), co-investigator on the Aging in Data research partnership (PI Kim Sawchuk) and have recently completed a CIHR-funded project (with Stephen Katz) on digital infrastructures for health and aging as part of a four-country collaboration through the European “More Years, Better Lives” initiative. Some current projects include research on how old bodies are visualized through datafied care technologies (with Wendy Martin, Kirsten Ellison and Isabel Pedersen), the implications of AI systems for reshaping gerontological knowledge (with a team of collaborators from the international Socio-gerontechnology Network) and the need for more nuanced and multidimensional understandings of ‘technogenarians’ (with Stephen Katz, Nicole Dalmer and Kirsten Ellison).