Can you spot the personal communication assistant?

For the past five years, Aram Donabed has worn what he calls "the traditional Silly-Putty-in-the-ear" hearing aid to help cope with hearing loss caused, he believes, by "too much loud rock 'n' roll music" in his youth. But when Donabed, 53, learned about a sleek new hearing aid called the Audéo -- euphemistically billed not as a hearing aid but as a "personal communication assistant" -- he hastened to his audiologist and got one.

"This was state-of-the-art, kind of like a Blue- tooth, really small, behind the ear, with a thin tube, and they come in all different colors," says Donabed, who lives south of Boston and works in real estate. When he wore it, his wife wasn't even aware he had it on. All in all, he muses, "There are a lot more choices out there than our parents had with technology."

Indeed there are. As the 78-million-member baby boom generation confronts the physical challenges of aging, the boomers, long accustomed to throwing their economic and cultural weight around, are doing so more than ever. Companies are racing to "boomerize" products and services, adding a flashier edge to stodgy devices like hearing aids or subtly tailoring their marketing pitch to a generation that never believed it would get old -- and still doesn't.

"Boomers do not consider themselves to be aging," says William Gribbons, founder of Bentley College's Design and Usability Center. "They see technology as a means of continuing their quality of life, and they are very style-conscious."

The market for satisfying the appetites and soothing the egos of boomers is so large and potentially lucrative that Joseph F. Coughlin, founder and director of MIT's AgeLab, says the boomers (usually defined as those born from 1946 to 1964) are ushering in a "marketplace of disruptive demographics." In that marketplace, he contends, older people, not younger ones, will define what is new.

"In the past, businesses looked to the younger consumer," Coughlin says. "Now, older adults are the early adopters." For instance, he says data show that women over 40 are the primary purchasers of flat-screen TVs. "The baby boomers are the lifestyle leaders that adopt new technologies, and they're looking for technology to be chic and aesthetically pleasing. The largest single generation in history is reaching its peak economic power, and businesses around the world are innovating to meet their demands."

And no demand, apparently, is too petty. Do you like cycling but find most bicycle seats too narrow because, at midlife, you're a bit broader in the beam? Time magazine reported recently that "comfort" bikes, tailored to older riders, are increasingly popular. "The very hottest part of the market is road bikes, which also appeal to boomers who may be giving up on" mountain bikes, Time wrote.

In addition to exercise, the boomer preoccupation with health has revolved around nutrition, the scrupulous monitoring of early warning signs, and sometimes the adoption of unorthodox New Age techniques. In all three areas, technology is rushing into the breach.

On the nutrition front, the AgeLab, which develops ideas and technologies for an aging population, has just completed work on a "Smart Personal Advisor." This handheld device will enable a consumer to make "healthy choices" in a supermarket (choosing, for example, low-salt crackers rather than crackers with high salt content) by swiping the product's bar code under the Smart Personal Advisor, which will let the consumer know whether the food meets his or her dietary objectives.

Some companies offer computerized devices that allow users to record and transmit blood-pressure readings to their doctors; other devices let patients use video to communicate their symptoms or questions to doctors. For boomers coping with job stress or the pressures of belonging to the "sandwich generation" (caring for ailing parents and children at the same time), there are New Age devices like the emWave Personal Stress Reliever that promise to help you maintain "emotional balance."

Beyond health concerns are the mundane matters of daily life, and here, too, marketers are making sure their gizmos are boomer-friendly -- sometimes by going back to basics. Take the cellphone, that indispensable tool. A tidal wave of media hype has surrounded Apple's iPhone, which allows a user to listen to music, check e-mail, surf the Internet, get live traffic reports, and take pictures. But what if you want to use a cellphone to just, you know, make a phone call? Preferably without squinting through your reading glasses at the numbers?

That's the niche Jitterbug appears to be aiming for. Manufactured by a company called GreatCall Inc., it is a basic, no-frills phone with large dialing buttons. Popular among senior citizens, Jitterbug also sends an unmistakable come-hither message to baby boomers, with a photo on its website of a middle-aged couple wearing fashionable glasses (the man proves his hipness by also wearing a soul patch).

Arlene Harris, the CEO and cofounder of GreatCall, who at 59 is a boomer herself, says that "the constant pressure of faster-smaller-lighter" in consumer electronics has resulted in a flood of "cellphones that a lot of us couldn't use, or wouldn't use. . . . People were having trouble with the size of the keys and the fonts and how you program the fonts. We didn't think people who wanted just casual use of cellphones should have to burden themselves with a lot of jargon and icons."

Nonetheless, with the boomer sensibility in mind, Harris takes pains to point out what she calls the "cool factors" in the Jitterbug, such as the ability to update your phone list online. "Sensible may not be cool all the time, but we really are trying to think about the user's experience," she says. "And that's cool."

In addition to finessing that tricky balancing act between coolness and functionality, the savvy marketer intent on appealing to boomers will touch the chords of generational memory. For example, Gribbons points to advertising campaigns that trade on rock 'n' roll music and imagery from the 1960s counterculture. But the savvy marketer will also find a technological way to discreetly accommodate the diminishing capacities of the boomers: Gribbons notes that the websites operated by financial services firms and other companies allow users to adjust the text size to a larger type, without ballyhooing that fact.

The vanity of baby boomers as they cope with the slings and arrows of aging can be a tricky matter. Marcia Dean, an audiologist in Worcester, says data suggest that as much as 20 percent of the baby boom generation has suffered significant hearing loss, but many have not gotten hearing aids. "They look at this big, flesh-colored thing behind the ear and they recoil from it," says Dean. "In our culture, it has the image of age. I think they're looking for something different from that. It's the boomer thing of looking for the highest technology, for something that has a little flash and edge to it."

Not surprisingly, the Audéo advertising brochures are loaded with flash and edge. In one ad, a man with a fashionably scruffy two-day growth of beard is seen wearing the hearing aid, which is barely visible. The ad copy describes him thusly: "Archeologist. Beach Volleyball Player. Hopeless Romantic. Audéo Wearer." In another, a youthful-looking woman with tousled hair is described as: "Former Punk Rocker. Zen Transcendentalist. Tennis Addict. Audéo Wearer."

In other words, the brochures make explicit the message that is implicit in many marketing campaigns aimed at the baby boom generation, now hogging the spotlight for the seventh decade in a row: You're not old. You're still cool. You've still got it.

In the words of a song that was popular when they actually were young, rather than struggling to stay youthful: You're still the one.

Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com.