In a future dominated by the young and by machines, is there room for older people?

Nothing is more telling than the first Longevity Business Fair and Trends Forum taking place at a time when Brazil faces a rapidly aging population, and when 70% of consumers over 50 are financially independent and able to move the entire Brazilian market by making their own purchasing decisions.

More than that, this population is increasingly active: traveling often, exercising regularly and seeking more information about physical and mental health in light of technological innovations that cut across all generations. Above all, what defines our moment is not the notion of one generation above another, but the coexistence of people of different ages and experiences, adding up knowledge instead of once again riding the hype wave, as happened a few years ago with the idea of Millennials as the bearers of a new era for the economy and the world of work.

However, when we think about innovation hubs around the world, especially Silicon Valley in the United States, we find that even though big names such as Mark Zuckerberg achieved economic success in their 30s, other major leaders of American tech companies are over 50, such as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Even so, the big trend in health (backed by heavy investments such as Google's Calico project) is the attempt to “cure” aging and, ultimately, extend life indefinitely, as advocated by British gerontologist Aubrey De Grey — who, incidentally, believes that people alive today will be able to live to 150 if they wish.

Through gene therapies, companies such as Elizabeth Parrish's BioViva are working on the possibility of reversing damage to a person's metabolism caused by diseases acquired over a lifetime, or by the degeneration that naturally comes with aging, as ways to slow the path toward death. The question, however, is: will the great achievement be allowing people to choose to live as long as they wish, or will we simply be reinforcing one of the prejudices the UN is already fighting today, ageism?

Within feminism, authors such as Naomi Wolf discussed in her book “The Beauty Myth”, published in the 1990s, the rigid and austere standards of female beauty, which involve not only the idea of the slim body seen in fashion magazines but also forbidding women to age and, therefore, to stop being beautiful. Just as the beauty industry profits from weight-loss drugs and supplements, it also profits from anti-aging surgical and cosmetic procedures. But as the name says, these are cosmetic solutions. To what extent does delaying wrinkles on someone's face truly reflect their physical and mental health? To what extent are surgical interventions and anti-aging treatments really about a fuller and healthier life, rather than a struggle for so-called eternal youth based on media stereotypes instead of individual well-being and balance?

It is in this sense that different voices are inviting debate and reflection on the elitism of Silicon Valley and big tech in their search for immortality solutions, or even escape to other planets, when these solutions would, in principle, only be viable for an elite able to pay for such procedures and services. As portrayed in dystopian science fiction such as Neill Blomkamp's film “Elysium”, we could experience an even greater socioeconomic apartheid in a future where our disparities are not only about how much we earn, but about the possibility that some can live forever and others cannot. Death could therefore become an even greater marker of socioeconomic distinction than it already is, considering that people from minoritized groups, such as trans and Black people, have a much lower life expectancy than a middle-class white man in Brazil, due not only to purchasing power but also to how society is structured and to the violence against them.

So when we discuss this bias in the tech industry, we are talking not only about an elitist and exclusionary movement, but also about the materialization of religious impulses that can be explored further if we study philosophical movements such as transhumanism or what historian Yuval Noah Harari calls dataism. Between the lines of this scenario, what we may see is a more sophisticated and diluted version of ageism, something that national movements such as Lab60+ have also been fighting.

After all, as Rosemary Lane, a UN representative, argued at the 2016 conference celebrating the International Day of Older Persons, “taking a stand against ageism is important because such misconceptions about seniors, maturity and aging shape how older people are perceived and treated by society, and this harms their social, economic and political inclusion, as well as their enjoyment of human rights.” Moreover, these ideas are rooted in prejudices and stereotypes that do not match reality or the demands of the future.

During my participation in the Longevity Fair, I raised the question of whether there is room for older people in a future possibly populated by the young and by machines. And yes, there is. In fact, we will need the qualities inherent to older people far more than those of young people when it comes to what machines cannot do. Today, almost 45% of current jobs could already be automated, meaning that more and more tasks and jobs may be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence in the future. However, these will not (at least not yet) be capable of critical and creative thinking in decision-making and reflection. And this is where older people stand out, with their strength in maturity and emotional intelligence.

According to a 2009 survey by Dubai Knowledge Village, 58% of the most successful professionals surveyed attributed their success mainly to emotional intelligence. Likewise, research at the University of California, Berkeley found that, as we age, despite possible physical and mental health issues, we are still “biologically programmed” to reach our peak emotional intelligence around the age of 60.

Thus, in a future supposedly dominated by inexperienced young people who are not yet biologically prepared for situations of high stress and pressure, it is older people who stand out with a vision of the future grounded in experience and maturity, reviving the classic figure of the sage: someone who, more than holding knowledge and information, is able to weigh them and make them flourish into more positive and robust decisions and projects thanks to emotional intelligence. As for technological knowledge, we increasingly see older people learning how to use digital platforms and even how to code. Moreover, today's young people, already used to the internet and social media, will be the over-60s of the future, so we may well be speaking the same language, as long as we remain open to dialogue and unafraid to keep learning every day.