Egenis seminar (hybrid), with Dr James Rupert Fletcher (University of Bath)

Digital Dementia: The Futures of Ageing and Artificial Minds

We often imagine digital technology as either separate from, or a solution to, later life and its associated problems, chief among them being dementia. However, older people are already inhabiting digital futures. Our ageing minds, far from being isolated inside our skulls, are shaped by the technologies we live with and shaped by our ideas about those technologies. Key digital developments – artificial intelligence, attention brokerage, social media and (mis)information systems – are transforming longstanding concerns regarding memory, attention, communication and delusion in people with dementia, for better and for worse. We make these technologies and we make the ideas that shape their deployments in everyday life, so might we make them differently to build better digital futures for ageing minds? The politics of digital technology are already, and will increasingly become, the politics of cognitive ageing itself.

Date and Time: 9 November 2026, 15:15-17:00

Venue: Byrne House, Streatham Campus, University of Exeter

Online: via Zoom

Description supplied by the event organiser.