Silver Tech, the “eternal new”: understanding an aging society through technology and chaos theory

Abstract Aging can be regarded as one of the most significant innovations of our time. Over the past one hundred years, global life expectancy has increased by thirty-six years, meaning that humanity is living longer and, consequently, experiencing aging more fully. Contemporary narratives, however, tend to describe aging as the linear outcome of advances in healthcare, medicine, and lifestyle. Yet, as a widespread social phenomenon, aging resembles less a linear trajectory than a complex, unpredictable, chaotic process. This study applies chaos theory to the social sciences to examine the non-linearity of later life through ethnographic and sociological analysis. Observations of a small group of older adults reveal the Silver Age as a generative phase in which individuals reinterpret their environments and technologies. Rather than a one-directional force acting upon older users, digital innovation becomes a site of mutual transformation, giving rise to new temporalities and “ages within age.” Within this context, the EUFACETS project was conceived as a multidisciplinary exploration of aging and technology. Its outcome, SAY (Souls Are Young), developed through ethnography, participatory design, and semiotic analysis, invited older adults to digitize analog photographs and enrich them with personal narratives. By fostering slow, reflective engagement, SAY demonstrates how older adults actively reshape digital media, reaffirming the Silver Age as an “eternal new.”