I felt insecure about accepting an offer of website hosting from Dudu Balochini, who suggested we host the two websites we had developed together on his server at no cost. I asked him: “But what if you die?”. I was referring to my access to the servers, but he thought it was about his age since he was almost twenty years older them me (I’m 42). He then challenged me: “What if you die?” And that was how we laughed together and moved on. The first site we published together answered a need from the Center of Ageing Studies located at UNIFESP Medical School. Their researchers monitor the elderly population of a neighbourhood in Sao Paulo, and their studies include investigating the impact of physical activity on ageing. One of the interventions they made was to map out opportunities within walking distance for older people to exercise. This mapping was manually adapted to the address of each patient – a herculean task. But an informal survey showed that 70% of program-assisted seniors have smartphones. I had this information in mind when I met Dudu for a coffee. “Do you think we could make these activities accessible through Google Maps based on people’s location?”, I asked him. And he just said “I already know how to do that. I need two hours”. Twenty-four hours later, he produced the site we called Get Up and Go: nearby activities for the 60+. “I used the Store Location feature in WordPress, but it took me a while because it was blocked for developers from Brazil”, he apologised as though I thought he was late.

The second site is part of my delivery for the applied side of the ASSA Project – Anthropology of Smartphones, Smart Ageing and mHealth. With an ethnographic approach, I observed how WhatsApp was used for health purposes in Sao Paulo. I mapped the best practices and organised them into a set of protocols for communication within hospitals and clinics. I also developed a second set of protocols addressing nutritionists (obesity and being underweight are both health issues among older people in Brazil). Both materials are open-access and should be available for download. That is why I needed a website to publish them. This time, Dudu didn’t develop the website for me. “You’re going to become a SeniorGeek”, he told me. SeniorGeek is an initiative for digital inclusion of seniors created by him. At presentation events addressing older people, Dudu tried to demystify technological themes like Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Chatbots. He believed older people should know about those things or they would be cut off from conversation with children and grandchildren and, moreover, with society. Dudu also believed he could enable seniors to become digital entrepreneurs through courses that teach how to build a website, or an e-commerce or a blog. This is how I became his student. By myself, with the autonomy he wanted all seniors to achieve, I developed and published my WhatsApp manuals at http://www.saudeeenvelhecimento.com.br. In my field site, entrepreneurship gains strength among older people as a means of reintegration into the labor market. This is a consequence of the desire of many to remain productive but it is also their way to respond to corporate ageism. Dudu himself used to say he lived in a limbo: too old for the market, but not a “legal” senior yet.

Dudu was also a public figure. He was often in the media, giving interviews about the relevance of digital inclusion for seniors. At 58, he used to say, “If you are old, you invented the Internet. The problem is that people accommodated and forgot about it”. And he has a point. We just have to remember that Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, creators of the TCP / IP protocol that enabled the Internet, are now aged 81 and 76 years old. However, ethnography showed me that this detachment from technology was also linked to retirement, when access to technology and needs in daily life change (Selwyn, 2004). Even so, Dudu’s speeches were inspiring and older people felt more confident because of him. Dudu died one week after I left my field site. An abrupt heart attack. On the one hand, he has achieved the death my informants desire the most: a death without illness or disease. I have written before about how my informants do not fear death. On the contrary, they see death as natural and even desire it when they think of the prospect of a future lived with physical, mental or financial limitations. On the other hand, it was an early death. Dudu was gone when he began to experience the purpose of life. I say experience because, among my informants, there is a feeling that the meaning of life is not something that can be explained by past achievements or by spiritual convictions. Therefore, they abandon philosophical reflections on the subject to focus on the present: they live today with purpose, filling daily life with pleasurable activities and, if possible, positively impacting the lives of those around them. Dudu brought these two accomplishments together in an intense agenda of events and courses.

And it was precisely the technology Dudu was so enthusiastic about that mediated his farewell. The news of his death spread via WhatsApp and was shared from group to group, giving rise to dozens of messages. Information about his funeral was also shared throughout the night, as well as information about the seventh day mass. For this last meeting, friends used WhatsApp again to prepare a last tribute. They have the idea to reproduce the “uniform” worn by Dudu, a black T-shirt, with the SeniorGeek logo. And during the days leading up to the mass, they spoke about how this production was made feasible all through their smartphones, as Dudu would like. The mobilisation was properly registered. And the pictures dominated social media again, now accompanied by the text “We are all senior geeks”. Dudu’s original WhatsApp group for his SeniorGeek initiatives was deactivated. A new one named “Senior Geek Connected” was created instead. It’s still a place where older people can find information about technology and new learning opportunities, keeping Dudu’s original idea alive. For him, above all, SeniorGeek was a manifesto against the invisibility of older people, something he believed only technology could solve.

Selwyn, N. (2004). The information aged: A qualitative study of older adults’ use of information and communications technology, Journal of Aging Studies, 18, 369–384

During my 16 months of ethnographic work in Yaoundé, I have been investigating the process of ageing in the digital era. As part of the research,I spent time with middle-aged people, but also retired older persons in order to try and obtain a clear understanding of their daily lives and routines The interviews, therefore, always included exploration of informants’ activities.

The daily activities of my research participants can be divided into 3 categories. There are those related to professional work for people still in service or who are forced to continue producing either to survive or to help their families. Then there are the activities that could be described as routine for retirees for those who no longer work and enjoy a retirement pension. These activities vary between associative and community involvement, commitment to civic life, sport and religious engagements. Finally, there are activities related to the displacement of living spaces that retirement imposes. In this sense, the “return to the village” is a major fact although complex to grasp. In Yaoundé, there is indeed a real tension between the ideal to return to the village, the materiality of life in these often rural areas with their deficiency in basic infrastructures and the relative comfort to which survey participants are accustomed. This makes this ideal an ambivalent reality.

Overall, informants are concerned about the occupation of their time in a practical perspective fulfilling several functions: first, a routine function capable of filling up days that can be long and boring, especially if they live alone or without immediate family present or nearby. These routine activities are thus varied and embrace the playful dimensions of life, for example watching television. It can also include participation in community life, religious and various activities. In this same fun life, the uses of the smartphone and other similar devices like the laptop should be considered. There is no clear break between these internet-related activities, for example watching and sharing videos and those related to television. Then, there are the “productive” activities, which the participants in the study consider as generating some benefits for themselves and for their close relatives.

A 64-year-old retired woman, a former primary school teacher organises an informal crèche in her home to “help neighbours who have young children who do not know what to do”. These children from the neighborhood are grouped with her grandchildren (3 in total), which her 3 sons and 3 daughters entrust her regularly when they are busy. It is an activity underlines the informant, « that allows to extend her work but also to help her family because the nurseries for children are expensive in Yaoundé when one is lucky to find one near home. “; this dimension of dual utility is fundamental for this informant as for other people met. Admittedly, the mobility and health variable and the financial capacity to sustainably extend activities such as this informant are needed.

Finally, there are a range of activities related to physical and mental health, and to the maintenance or construction of a social and community network. Staying active to stay healthy is the watchword for study participants, especially among public sector retirees and former formal sector workers. In this area, walking, sport, outings and meetings within sports groups that extend to associative activities (tontines), volunteering, and strong community participation are central. However, it is necessary to take into account the complexity of the life trajectories of individuals, and to keep in mind that there is not always a clear cutoff between being retired and the cessation of activities. Just as the retirement activities are not to be considered as exclusively new or in complete disruption to the professional life of the participants in the study.