Waiting time

There's an interesting new book by Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren. I could recommend it to anyone who is interested in what is going on when nothing happens (When nothing really happens or in Swedish "När inget särskilt händer" is the title of the two ethnologists newest book). In the book you can find a lot of really interesting examples about small scale "dramas" happening when it looks as though everything is moving forward in an automatic, dull way. In the shop queues, in the doctors' waiting rooms etc. And how about the intriguing so called disguised waiting (Ehn and Löfgrén 2007:70)? It's the situation when you wait for someone and you don't want to look like a waiting person...A perfect time for playing with your mobile phone or music player...And what about other situations of waiting? Waiting for the weekend , waiting for a project to start, waiting for funding and in case of illness waiting for the decisions and results that predict your future? How about analyzing waiting processes and forced waiting using the concept of power? Be nice and patient, and wait for your turn is used to educate us from the early childhood into becoming humble "waiters" (there's really not any word for this. What should you call a person who is waiting?). Anyway, our society is trying hard to avoid waiting and make everything more efficient. Using the slogan "you don't have to wait here" are for those who want everything straight away and at the moment they get in contact. But what about the opposite? What if you like or get so used to waiting that it's a part of every service delivery? Are we segmented into those who can't wait and those who can or are forced to wait (because of power issues?)...

Seniors 2.0

It's not that easy to start writing after a longer period of leisure time and especially extensive eating. But by relaxing I found a lot of interesting ideas that could be developed further. Here is one example. As my favorite research subject is senior consumers and my work is becoming more and more a part of the social web world (just starting a project in our Library) I decided to combine these two. Seniors 2.o is emerging and we should really be aware of this development. In Finland there has been some trials but I think that they have become unknown and not so socially interactive as the design of the websites is old-fashioned and there is no good network of active participants.

Facebook for seniors has been demanded in this blog post and there are plenty of examples of best practices all around the world agetimeseconomie and boomerwomenmarketing and 50plusmarkt

So there really are interesting issues both in research and innovations to launch in this area. It's important to fight against ageism, to empower every age group in the society and also facilitate communication and the feeling of being included.