Geraldine Beddel, editor of Gransnet, wrote a very thoughtful piece last week which argued that our society has unwittingly colluded in the mistreatment of old people by our widespread casual ageism.

Her thesis is that until we respect our elders, the pernicious cruelty towards old people will continue.

While I agree with her arguments I would like to make two observations.

The first is that these attitudes are far more prevalent in the indigenous, longer established population and much less in the families from Africa and Asia where the wisdom of age is much more valued and respected.

People from these continents are used to seeing their elders work hard, without the protection of a welfare state and pension schemes. In these cultures, a person is brought up and protected by the extended family, and as they get older they then look after those who’ve looked after them. 

There’s self interest and community interest at heart here, and it works well. Where this family/community protection is replaced by the state or other institutions, the appreciation of the human relationship is rapidly diluted. 

When transplanted into this country, such respect for older people remains for one or two generations. I know several African families very well, and respect for elders is a value that is instilled into the children. Any ageist remark or attitude is sometimes literally slapped down.

The second point is that we should value old people not just because they brought us up, but because they have so much to teach us. Again this is where communities from less developed countries can illuminate our failings.

Their idea of education was less through formal schooling and more from the passing down of wisdom, ideas, values and experience from generation to generation. The collective learning of old people was critical to the success or failure of a family, village or tribe.

In our more developed culture, old people may not play such an educational role, but their memories, life stories, achievements, attitudes make up micro social and family histories.

We should understand their worth and do all we can to keep them, because once lost they are lost forever.

This is why the Lifebox is such a useful service.  It’s an online secure area designed to enable personal histories to be uploaded and stored, then to be accessed by chosen younger family members.

It’s probable that many older people who will want a Lifebox will need the help of younger family members to populate it, and in doing so, the bonding between young and old will increase the mutual intergenerational respect.

This in turn will reduce our tendency, pointed out by Geraldine Bedell, to dismiss the value of our older family members.

Penelope Keith, now one of our ‘institutions’, has written in the Daily Telegraph that if younger people mixed more with older people they would be less inclined to break the law.

The star of The Good Life and To The Manor Born is president of a prisons charity which works to divert young people away from a life of crime.

She believes that teenagers and young adults would behave better if they spent more time with grandparents and other older people.

I hope she would like the idea of the Lifebox, the area in My Last Song where people can store and upload their digital memories so they are available for future generations. In effect it’s a digital time capsule.

The reason it should find favour with Ms Keith is that it is ideally suited to encourage younger members of the family to help older members use it. And in doing so, they will learn the lifestories and family history being imparted. This bonding might indeed make youngsters more law abiding. 

For in return, the young relatives will teach their grandparents and other older loved ones to use a computer with more confidence, the result being a unique and valued piece of family and social history which otherwise would be lost forever. The soft skills coaching of their elders will give youngsters a greater sense of purpose and self esteem.

If your family could benefit from all the features of the Lifebox, including drawing the generations closer together and older people being more computer literate, look no further than buying a Lifebox for the person whose memories should be safely stored, or for the youngster to show to his grandparents, ready to sit down and populate it every week or so.

“If you live on in the hearts and minds of those who love you, you haven’t really died at all,” was a powerful if somewhat sentimental quote I came across the other day.

When I read it I thought it summed up the emotional reasons to have a Lifebox, available via My Last Song.

The Lifebox can make someone  ‘live on’ by storing photographs, specially recorded videos and audio messages, scanned documents and uniquely drafted personal information such as life history, details of friends and family, achievements, interests, hobbies and favourite activities including most enjoyed films, plays, holidays, cars, music…the list is as long or short as befits the individual life that is being memorised online.

The ‘saved’ life is not open for all to see if stored in the Lifebox as it can only be opened by the people who have been given the access details by the Lifebox owner. Those granted permission to access the content of the Lifebox would be close family members who, when wanting to remember more clearly their departed loved one, can then play the specially recorded messages and read the letters and share the thoughts that will remind them of the life, personality and unique qualities of their loved one.

Those close relatives will, hopefully, feel less sad, the loss being easier to bear if this information is left for them to access when needed.

They will also admire the foresight of the relative for using the Lifebox not just to store such wonderfully unique memories and personal information to hand on to future generations, but the vital information required by close family members and executors to deal with the probate issues and funeral arrangements.

This type of memorisation, using a safe secure online storage space, adds so much more to the ‘family tree’ information usually limited to dates of birth, marriage and death, names of partner(s) and children, with a few other details added if someone has the time to do the research on the life of the family member thus recorded.

All these are compelling reasons to get a Lifebox, but none as much as the fact that it gives you digital immortality in the hearts and minds of your loved ones.

Things have progressed and in the right direction. I have spoken at length to an officer within the education service at Lambeth, and he likes the IPHOS idea.

The idea is that children nominate an older and computer illiterate or unconfident family member who they will mentor to be more computer confident and competent through the medium of putting their life stories and family histories in their Lifeboxes within My Last Song.

This will enable more older people to go online with confidence, thus fulfilling one of the goals of Race Online 2012, of which My Last Song is a partner organisation.

Older people are obviously a target group, and if My Last Song can help more of them to understand the benefits of going online and have the ability to go online, then it’s a win win situation.

I also think one of the advantages will be the telling of family history by older relatives to their younger family members, and then the capturing of it within the Lifebox, secure for future generations to access to get an accurate insight into their departed loved one’s life and times.

Encouragingly, the Department for Education sent me a positive email wishing me success with the venture and crucially providing the names and contact details of Heads of Children’s Services in every local authority.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting to hear from my old school friend who is Cabinet member for Education, Children and Families at Barnet Council who was also enthusiastic about the proposal when I discussed it with him a few weeks ago.

So, it looks as if there could be two pilot projects in very different London boroughs launched in the autumn from which we can learn good practice before inviting schools throughout the country to participate.

Hopefully this will be in time for Race Online 2012′s Get Online Week, starting 18 October.

I can report progress on the intergenerational communications scheme I wrote about two weeks ago.

Well, for a start it is now called the Interfamily Personal History Online Scheme, or IPHOS for short.

More importantly, two weeks ago I sent an outline proposal to the Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, and also to a civil servant at the Department For Education.   As the scheme, sorry IPHOS, is to get school children to improve their older relatives’ computer confidence and competence, the minister and department responsible for schools seemed good places to start.

Well, this morning I got a call from the civil servant who said he liked the scheme.

He cautioned that the minister would probably decide that the proposal was too ‘hands on’ to deal with, and that instead I should talk to local authorities as these were responsible for the day to day educational activities of schools within their areas.

Rather than ‘cold call’ local councils, I thought I would see what endorsement or support I could get from Race Online 2012, whose purpose is to get as many people in the UK online and computer competent by the end of 2012 as possible.

Race Online 2012 is headed by Martha Lane Fox, so any backing the scheme (alright, IPHOS) gets from that organisation will receive the necessary publicity.

So I have just sent them an email asking what level of support I can expect from them.

I have adapted IPHOS to include a ‘deliverable’ whereby children who nominate an older relative to populate their Lifebox with their life histories and details about their friends and relatives will tell their classes about the interesting personal histories they have helped capture online.

This must appeal to teachers, families and pupils alike for it will enable children to tell each other in an ordered way their families’ histories thereby encouraging an interest in social history and an appreciation of their older relatives’ lives and times.

IPHOS might, of course, be one of hundreds of schemes with nice acronyms that never see the light of day, but I’m hopeful it might be a runner given the input of the DoE official and hopefully the backing of Race Online 2012.

Now I also need the support of a computer supplier or retailer such as Sony, Dell, Toshiba, Acer, HP, Currys or Comet and IPHOS will have some ‘traction’ as the marketeers like to say.

I will keep you posted.