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Abstract

This special issue addresses two important defining features of today's society: ageing and digital technologies. In the 21st century, ageing has become one of the most significant social transformations [27], as an increase in the ageing population is changing much of the world and has become visibly real in many societies. Population ageing is occurring in a digital world, wherein Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are playing a pivotal role in multiple facets of everyday life. Thus, it is timely to better understand how these technologies may enrich ageing (and living) in the early 21st century, as well as to ask what we may learn about our increasing dependency on ICTs, if looked at from the purview of age and ageing.The aim of this interdisciplinary special issue is to bring together a selection of papers that contribute to the aforementioned goal. The editors of this special issue come from three different areas: Human-Computer Interaction, Communication and Media Studies, and Education. Despite the growing amount of research in these (and other) areas on ageing and digital technologies, we argue that there is still much work to do on the relationship between older people and ICTs. Human-Computer InteractionWithin Human-Computer Interaction, ageing has only become a significant research area relatively recently [30]. While the user is a central concept within the field, this user has traditionally been assumed to be either a young or a middle-aged person. The main question that drives the dominant trend in HCI research on or with older people can be summarized as: 'how can we help older people?' [21]. In much HCI research conducted with or concerned about older people, this assumption is seen in the following ways: compensating for the impact of age-related declines in functional abilities on user interface design; reducing social isolation; enabling older people to remain in touch with their children and grandchildren via new Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) tools [20]. Helping older adults to live independently and to age-in-place with assistive technologies [18] captures another set of presuppositions. Within the field, stereotypical views of older people as unable to either learn or use digital technologies also predominate, as argued in [5]. Albeit important, these perspectives, particularly the assumption that older adults are unable or incapable and need 'our help', provides but a partial view of the relationship between older people and digital technologies. For instance, this view renders imperceptible the long history of engagements of older adults with digital tools and changes in media, those older