ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the confluence between developments in the information and communication technologies (ICTs) of the late twentieth century and contemporary changes in the social nature of later life. Beginning in the 1980s, an expanding array of digital technologies moved the world toward an increasingly networked society. The conditions establishing the new ageing can be traced to the long sixties and its associated consumer revolution. Just as it is possible to chart the emergence of the third age as a generational field reflecting the dissolution or destandardisation of the traditional institutional structures of industrial society, so it is possible to consider the emergence of a distinct technological habits associated with the new ICTs as constituting another feature of this emergent cultural field. As the retired population continues to grow in size and in cultural and social salience, the diversity as well as the divisions within this community are becoming more apparent.
