Conscious Ageing Club – we kicked it off!

Celebration time: last week we successfully kicked off our Conscious Ageing Club with its first English speaking episode (after a couple of episodes in Hungarian)! It’s nice, isn’t it? You might wonder though what our Conscious Ageing Club is exactly, so let us tell you!

During one of our projects, co-founded by the European Commission, called DigInclude, we’ve been wondering a lot about how the rapidly changing technology, the digital (r)evolution and AI is (going to) effect our everyday lives, our opportunities & challenges and the way we co-exist in our communities & societies. As we’ve been digging deeper and deeper into how we can be consciously digital (we’ve even designed and created a free online course along the topic that you can check out here), we realised it’s a topic that keeps people busy in a way. To bring together these people full of perspectives, full of opinions, full of ideas, full of questions, we decided to open up the stage for meaningful dialogues with our communities! Hence a good old-fashioned informal club in a nice modern shape: digitally.

Last week a couple of lovely people joined the club conversation to discover a bit the topic of conscious ageing in the digital and AI driven world. As to begin with, we dedicated 90 minutes to for this huge topic, which only allowed us to look at a wider picture while having an informal conversation with people of similar interests yet different perspectives. People gathered from Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands and Lithuania with various backgrounds, experience, age and affinity to technology, which we were very pleased to see. Some of the insights we heard during the conversation: 

• It’s hard to imagine what digital life and technology will look like in 20 years.
• AI has been with us for long years, yet the revolution of it feels new. While it has amazing potentials (such as diagnostics, care strategy, education) it raises moral concerns on different levels.
• It’s challenging to find a balance in how we want to keep up with technology’s further evolution. A strong concern has been raised about if we are able to say no to certain technologies without being excluded from society. 
• AI and other evolving technologies need severe preparation: education of the society, awareness raising, discussion and dialogues, cooperation and co-creation between designers and end users.
• Individuals, communities and societies should focus on their digital readiness to be able to use these technologies to their most benefits and their least harms. 
• The (r)evolution of technologies does not mean a pure focus on our digital life, but incorporating our digital existence into our “in real life”  (offline) presence – a.k.a. mental health and digital wellbeing.
• Evolving technologies should be considered as great complementary help to human work based not only on rational, but emotional factors. 
• Governmental and societal support is needed in order to help disadvantaged and marginalised groups’ digital inclusion, such as educating seniors. 
• One of our roles could be to keep up the conversation and help as many people as possible to reflect on these technologies, and the opportunities and risks or threats they bring. 
• The need for further discussion of the topic was born during this club discussion: we all agreed to have more conversation on the same going into more specific details. As a next step, we would like to create a space to share personal examples, coping mechanisms, strategies, ideas etc for preparing to and using these quickly evolving technologies – keep your eyes pealed for our upcoming club discussions! 🙂

Many more club conversations are yet to come, and you’re welcome to join!  Remember, it’s a space for us to co-create and shape according to our needs, so we are always happy to hear about what keeps you busy and what you’d like to hear more about. Just send an email to nora@hekatefoundation.org if you have something specific already now in your mind – questions, concerns, wishes, anything can come.

If you’d like to stay up to date, please follow our Facebook page for upcoming events and keep an eye on our website for articles on related topics. If you’d like to think together, discover and discuss topics that come up along our digital journey, join Hekete’s Digital Learning Hub where you can be part of a willing to learn community that is just about to get started! (Sneak peak: very soon we’re launching an online course on Digital Readiness in our Learning Hub, don’t miss out if you’re interested!)