The AgeLab at MIT

 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has an AgeLab. Among other things, they created a suit that simulates the effects of aging. The suit includes yellow glasses, neck harness, bands around the elbows, wrists, and knees, boots with foam padding, and special gloves that add resistance to finger movements. Writer Adam Gopnik tried the suit and discovered that every small task becomes effortful. More than that, he reports, “the concentration that each act requires disrupts the flow of life…the ceaseless flow of simple action and responses…mostly without effort.” The suit made him aware not so much of the “physical difficulties of old age, which can be manageable, but of the mental state disconcertingly associated with it—the price of age being perpetual aggravation.”

Well, maybe Gopnik was perpetually aggravated while wearing the suit, but I’d guess that most of us old people are only aggravated part of the time. As for our activities requiring added concentration, he’s right about that. I’m more careful than I used to be about walking down the stairs and around impediments. Until reading his words, I hadn’t been aware of the “willful attention” now required for activities that I’d previously managed without thinking about it. He also equates the "ceaseless flow of simple action" as the "happiness of life." "Happiness is absorption, and absorption is the opposite of willful intention.” That’s a bit over the top, I think.

The purpose of the MIT AgeLab is to encourage and incubate new technologies and products for old people. They quickly learned that old people “are a market that cannot be marketed to,” the reason being that old people will not buy anything the reminds them that they are old. For example, after developing the neck pendant (“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”), they discovered that no one wants one. That would be me. Happily, the iPhone and Apple Watch have a red panic button app that alerts your emergency contact people. No one need know.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.