ABSTRACT
The narrative on digital spaces and online experience is one dominated by youth, from the so-called digital natives first heralded by Prensky to digital entrepreneurs and influences. However, there has recently been a significant growth in the numbers of older people going online. Often forgotten, "digital settlers", many of them women, went online when the World Wide Web came to life in the 1990s, creating communities and networks of affinity, writing online journals and weblogs. They have stayed ever since, sometimes at the heart of digital spaces, sometimes hidden in the fringes. One of these spaces was home to a community of older women; from 1997 to 2012 we wrote our lives online, in daily conversations and stories. In this autoethnographical paper, through a multivoiced narrative, I explore concepts of death and mourning online and offline, and I celebrate my mentors in ageing. I draw on literary theory to relate these themes to time and space online through the concept of the Bakhtinian chronotope.
