1st Edition

Granny @ Work Aging and New Technology on the Job in America

By Karen E. Riggs Copyright 2004

    Granny @ Work is an impassioned comment on aging, work, and technology in American culture. As Riggs challenges popular assumptions with surprising research-for example, people over the age of 60 spend more time on the Internet than people of any other age group-and trenchant cultural critique, she forces us to confront the deeply entrenched ageism in today's technology-driven workplace.

    AcknowledgmentsChapter 1. The New, New Deal: The Post-Retirement EraChapter 2. Lost Boomers in Space: Aging Workers and the Soft Digital EconomyChapter 3. An American (Techno)Legend: Women, Age, and the Harley-Davidson WorkplaceChapter 4. 'Granny, Go Ahead, You Won't Tear It Up:' Central-City Elders Go Computing (with Jacquelyn Vinson and Amy Lauters) Chapter 5. Use It or Lose It: The Self-Programmable ElderChapter 6. Wizards, Space Cowboys, and (of course) Sean Connery: Film Images of Aging WorkersChapter 7. Who You Callin' Dude?: Magazine Advertisers Discover Older WorkersChapter 8. How to Win Matures and Influence Boomers: Intergenerational Communication Through Self-HelpChapter 9. Driving with Dad: Intergenerational Journeys on the SuperhighwayChapter 10. The Digital Divide's Gray Fault Line: Aging Workers, Technology, and PolicyAfterword

    Biography

    Karen E. Riggs is Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University. She is author of Mature Audiences: Television in the Lives of Elders.

    "Extremely well-written, accessible, and logically argued...This book will fill a key, but essentially overlooked area in studies of technology, media, and culture...Riggs considers human subjects and communities in a manner that might actually change the ways that scholars generalize about the impact of new technologies." -- John T. Caldwell, UCLA