The aim of the “Museum of Data Objects” exhibit (on display on McMaster University’s campus at the Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging for the Spring 2026 semester) is to challenge dominant characterizations and imaginaries of older adults, technology and data, building on the results of our AiD funded pilot study, Mapping Older Adults Data Worlds. In our study, fifteen older adults participated in a semi-structured interview that aimed to capture their understandings of data and their use or not of digital devices. The long-form interviews, carried out in older adult participants’ homes, also explored their embodied experiences of living with and among data and took a ‘life history’ approach to documenting their still unfolding relationships and imaginaries of data and technology. In many cases, this elicited novel reflections on shifts in technology over six or seven decades. The pilot study also allowed us to develop a visual elicitation method that we term the data assemblage mapping exercise. Upon conclusion of the interview portion of our home visit, we invited older adults to take us on a tour around their homes to show us significant technologies (digital or analog) in their space. In each case, with their permission, we photographed the object in question, and elicited stories about how it fit into their everyday lives.
We have now compiled over 50 photographs of data objects our older adult participants showed us and narrativized during our home visits. The “Museum of Data Objects” public exhibit will feature a selection of the photographs, nicely printed and blown up, accompanied by text excerpts from our conversations with the person who introduced us to each object. Some of the excerpts will correlate directly to the object shown (for instance, a keyboard that ‘makes typing sounds like my old typewriter’ that one participant attaches to her laptop when writing short stories or a snapshot of the homepage of a participant’s iPad showing all the games she plays as a self-identified ‘gamer’). Others may take the photograph they are associated with as a platform for a less explicit reflection on the general theme of older adults, technology, and data (including, e.g., a Smartphone image accompanied by one participants’ reflections on ‘phone’ technology in her lifetime—all the way back to growing up in rural Alberta where the only phone line was shared by community members at a post office 30 minutes from her family farm). We may also aim to demonstrate how the life experiences of participants influence their relationship to technology in later life, as in the case of one participant’s atomic wall clock that is always on ‘perfect time’; as a former stockbroker, being precise with time, combined with being a ‘techno-nerd’ manifests in such technologies in his home.
The exhibit showcases that older adults are sophisticated theorists of their lifelong technological experiences and interactions with data and, in many cases, are interested in and keen to adopt even the most cutting-edge technologies into their homes and lives, contrary to assumptions of their inability to ‘catch up’ or their aversion to new technologies.
