Boomers and Technology: An Extended Conversation

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What happens when "creative clutter" meets transparency in a new, elegant building? Robert Campbell reviews the new MIT Media Lab building at MIT.

Frank Moss, the Media Lab’s director, puts it this way: “It will take time to regain the sense of mess and to repopulate with junk.’’

It’s the classic marriage of form and content. The new building is Snow White and the Media Lab is Mad Max. Time will reveal how well the marriage works.

That said, viewed simply and purely as a work of architecture, this is a wonderful building. You can think of it as an exercise in transparency. The Media Lab has long been famous for hiding itself in a building by I.M. Pei that was a nearly windowless box. The new building, which joins the Pei at one edge, is exactly the opposite. From outside, you can look all the way through it from one end to the other. It’s sheathed in shimmering glass and metal screens that allow about half the sunlight through to the interior. You feel that the building is temptingly veiled, not blanketed.

AARP and Microsoft held series of extended focus group-like sessions with a bunch of Baby Boomers in May 2009. The focus was on technology use and adoption. The results are the white paper, Boomers and Technology: An Extended Conversation. They'll be of interest to many SCUPers not only because many SCUPers are Boomers, but because of what they reveal about a continuing education market for Boomers as they continue to learn as they age:

Boomers are ready for more technology. They’re actually more likely than those 18-49 — by a margin of 59 percent to 55 percent4 — to agree with the statement “Technology will help me live a fuller life.” And indeed, boomers’ ideas for new technology center around health, communications and the home. Said one Phoenix participant: “How about a phone that has a feedback device to tell you if you’re out of line: like you’re drinking too much, or you’re a little overweight, you’d better cut this out. It keeps reminding you, and when you finally straighten out it gives some positive feedback.” Another participant immediately added: “Or the insurance company gives you the cell phone and it lowers your rates if you behave.”