This article focuses on participants and researchers who actively tested a prototype -a robot intended to enhance the health of elders. Specifically, this article analyses interactions between robots, elder test users, and robot designers to examine how images of elder users, definitions of health, and ideas about ageing shape the development of technology. The designers imagined the prospective user as a person who would both need and want a health robot. In contrast, test users drew upon stereotypes of old people and imagined the prospective user as a lonely person in need of care and company. To resist this stereotype, they presented themselves as cognitively and physically healthy, independent, and helpful. This image of the helpful test user allowed participants to simultaneously enjoy the robot and position themselves as not old or in need of care. The participants' views, however, did not influence the designers' overall view of elder users, and were not incorporated into their design practices. Recognising and taking into account test users' views on elder technology usersspecifically their understanding and rejection of negative stereotypes of old people -could help prevent resistance to (and thus the non-use of) health technologies by elders.
We propose directions for future research on aging and technology to address fundamental changes in the experience of later life that come with the "digitization" of societies. Our argument is contextualized by the massive investments of policy makers and companies in gerontechnologies and their failure to create scale and impact. Partly this failure is due to an interventionist logic that positions new technologies as interventions or solutions to the problems of aging. What has been overlooked - at least theoretically - is how aging is already co-constituted by gerontechnology design, the socio-material practices it enacts, and the policy discourse around them. Goals are (a) reviewing elements of the current aging and technology agenda, (b) demonstrating how the interventionist logic has hampered theory development (and practical impact), (c) pulling together key insights from the emerging body of empirical literature at the intersection of social gerontology and Science and Technology Studies (STS), with the objective of (d) providing directions for future research on aging and technology. Our argument presents the theoretical gains that can be made by combining insights from STS and social gerontology to research the co-constitution of aging and technology.
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