The Age Debate – Not really a debate.

Forty is the new Twenty, Fifty is the new Thirty, and so on. This year is seeing an unmistakable and much needed change in the perception towards the aged and ageing. Last week in The New York Times Magazine’s 9th Annual Year in Ideas, alongside Massively Collaborative Mathematics (Using a blog and blog comments to solve complicated equations…where was Google Wave when they needed it!), and The Google Algorithm as Extinction Model (Google, saving the world, once again) was a short piece entitled The Myth of the Deficient Older Person.

The tides are finally turning for older employees, perhaps too late for the thousands who have recently found themselves laid off and brushed off in the interview process (ask my father, who spent two years searching for an upper management position in technology. He recently retired instead). One more reason I’m glad the tides are turning? I’m tired of hearing my friends complaining about their parents being on Facebook. I doubt they’ll be part of the set who spends half their day updating their status while their bosses look on. IStrategy Networks reported that the month of August saw a 25% percent jump in users over 55. You can’t help but think that a huge chunk of a valuable workforce is wasting its talents on Facebook (not that mine aren’t)…