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Paper short abstract

Smart rural futures are explored in four workshops with rural elderly participants, using visions and expectations to unpack normative ideals and technological assumptions around the progress and deployment of ‘smartness’ within wider societal trends of rural ageing.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores visions and expectations of smart rural futures from an elderly rural perspective in Estonia, often considered a digital leader and post-digital society, where urban-rural socio-spatial exclusion manifests in an ageing rural periphery. In this digital-by-default national context, the elderly are perceived as relatively experienced users of digital services compared to other European countries, yet constitute an underrepresented perspective on smart rural development. Smart rural futures were explored in four workshops with rural elderly participants, where so-called ‘newspapers of tomorrow’ were produced envisioning what the participants’ smart rural locality of the future can look like. We analyze these newspapers of tomorrow using visions and expectations to unpack normative ideals and technological assumptions around the progress and deployment of ‘smartness’ within wider societal trends of rural development. Based on preliminary analysis, the exercise points to the need to uncover complexity in the socio-technical imaginary of a smart society, in particular regarding its implications for rural areas and underrepresented or missing voices in shaping this future. We suggest that there is a critical tendency to focus on youth rather than elderly voices when discussing the future, even when the social fabric of rural areas disproportionately relies on elderly inhabitants.