Age and technology do have something to do with each other. But there is no reason to place as much strain on their relationship as computer pioneer Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil believes that in the foreseeable future electronic systems will actually make the leap from a prolonged life to immortality. What he means by this is "uploading human personality onto non-biological units", protecting it by means of several "backup copies". In a portrait in the electronic lifestyle magazine "Wired", Kurzweil also talks about "hanging in there" and his expectations that even in his lifetime something he describes as a "singularity" could be possible. As he puts it, now, just before the technical breakthrough, dying of something like a heart attack is rather like being shot on the Western Front in the First World War just before the ceasefire was signed.

Just how the baby boomers, to date the most vehement proponents of youth culture, will come to terms with the idea of being assisted by little digital helpers and indeed how the so-called "digital natives", those people who grew up with computers, will feel about the rise of eldertronics, remains to be seen. Yet, so it seems, its acceptance depends on three things: first of all, on the appeal of the products, secondly on understanding of and respect for the older generation and its needs, and finally on people’s own attitude to age, their fellow human beings and to life. For science finally seems to have realized something, namely, that a constant fear of new things can shorten our life expectancy. Or, as the Chinese poet Lü Bu We put it almost 300 years B.C., "When the ear can no longer take pleasure in sounds, when the eye can no longer take pleasure in beauty, when the mouth can no longer enjoy tasty morsels, then that is just as bad as death."

Max Ackermann