Welcome to Retirement!

Congratulations, you’ve made it to retirement age, and without a pension or investment plan, you’ll have to hack your way through your golden years like you did your youth. Have no fear, with a little bit of innovative thinking and peer collaboration, you can seamlessly cruise through your elder dementia in style!

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Many precarious workers do manage to make it to retirement, and it just might happen to you. Some Americans have turned to “outsourcing eldercare” by shipping their parents off to India, to live like a Maharaja on $2000/month. In Japan, the film “Mezon do Himiko” tells the story of a retirement home for elderly transvestites and homosexuals. They managed to fund their retirement from a successful Tokyo nightclub and wealthy donors.


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But are Ledgestriders™ so well prepared for our retirement? Do you really think people will want to read your pitch decks, funding or job applications when you’re wearing a diaper? It’s time to start exploring options for people who aren’t part of the rank and file society before it’s too late.


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But you are now 96 years old and your robotic care assistant accidentally sucked up your dentures into the opensource vacuum cleaner because the IoT fridge and stove were chatting away and inadvertently knocked the robot offline.


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It’s really not a problem because a neighbour in your HackGrace has a 3D printer and (after downloading a free 3D file off Thingiverse) you manage to print a new set of teeth. Unfortunately, they are not the right size and you wind up gumming your food at that evening’s Disco Soup event, getting chunks of organic radish all over your sustainable milk-fiber bib. Since your robotic helper is on the fritz, you decide to wash yourself off in the hipster bathing facility but slip and break your hip.


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Again, your mates have this problem covered and start using 3D printed bones to grow you a new leg. Unfortunately, the operation doesn’t go well and you get an infection, however, there is a cure for those with sufficient computational capacity: you can manufacture your own patent-free medicine based on your individual DNA.

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Hooray! You win! you have advanced to the next level of retirement: that of constantly badgering your kids to come and visit you! But not everyone will be so lucky in the future, so it is time to explore the different possibilities that can be made to exist for people outside the “system”.

Over the next two years Edgeryders is convening a community around a next generation internet that supports humans to live well together. We are calling it Internet of Humans.

We’ll do it with everybody, leveraging community management, and the Edgeryders stack of open source technologies to turn the online conversation into collective intelligence. The whole process will be – and stay – open to anyone who wants to participate.


Together we will:

  • collect experiences of human centric internet and digital tech solutions
  • validate them through open discussion, both online and offline
  • use this information to matchmake people and projects around opportunities to do collaborative fundraising and lobbying for the practical work of building and sustaining the solutions we need.

Want to get involved? Great! Getting started is easy.



Just pick one of the focus themes presented in the image above and tell us a story that explores scenarios for how manage/respond to that need in the not so far future. These stories can be accounts of your personal, first hand experiences or they can be entirely fiction speculations on possible futures to come. We are especially interested in exploring how/which people are currently contributing to a future internet that supports efforts to build humane, sustainable and equitable futures.

Contributors who’s stories engage others in thoughtful conversation are eligible for one of our Humans of Internet Fellowships.

When you are ready to share your story, create an account on edgeryders.eu and post your story here:
Tell Us About You - Edgeryders





How we are financing this:

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825652.


The post ^^ was based on a piece commissioned by Edgeryders from Jeff Andreoni

6 Likes
Julia

Hi! I had a chat with Nadia about the Human Centric Internet fellowship, and will share it here, so that others who might also consider applying can access the same info:

Good morning! I came across the call for fellows from edgeryders, about human centric internet, and i was considering to apply. [Fellowships with Bursaries for Human-Centric Internet builders!]

Do you think i would stand a chance?

Nadia

Hej Julia

I think so, yes

Maybe create an account, see which discussions are of interest to you and leave some thoughtful comments? https://edgeryders.eu/c/ioh

start by introducing yourself here https://edgeryders.eu/c/ioh/tell-your-story

I cannot guarantee anything but the process is fully open

and I am especially adamant that we have real diversity in participation

perspectives, backgrounds, disciplines, interests, manguages etc

languages

gender etc

Julia

Hi! Thanks for getting back to me! Yeah, i will definitely give it a try then!

Nadia

either way - we are constantly channeling opportunities to support people’s work who are active in the community

And the more active the community, the more we can do this

we are doing several rounds of fellowships too

Julia

Ok, interesting.

Nadia

it’s pretty eclectic - to get a sense of how/where we are wired - the contributions/discussions/approach go from pretty serious to [Welcome to Retirement!]

Julia

Looks like good fun to be honest. I was more leaning towards the serious side, as im brainstorming for some sarcastic futurisitc art elsewhere…
Need to keep the balance. :slight_smile:

Nadia

yes, it is meant as inspiration to get thinking going along lines of how life and tech are intertwined instructions below encourage both creative writing and or first hand accounts of personal experiences as a starting point the two are usually completely separate which I think leads to this disconnect we see in tech.

Julia

That’s great. Personally im usually to much of a grassroots empirical generalist to fit, but this actually does looks promising. Ill give it a shot then. Thanks for taking the time!

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Anytime. We are all in this fix, its sink or swim together afaic.

Hey Julia, and welcome! What are you usually up to?

Hi @hugi!

I just managed to finish “my story” My story - Thoughts on collaboration
It is not exactly an introduction to what I do, but at least it is something. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Julia

4 Likes

ping @JZib, do you think a call like this could be interesting for the Transmedial crowed?