Dear LPG

I have read some really interesting information on the LPG website amongst others, and it got me asking a few questions. Have you noticed that the vast majority of the information which has been available over the years has mainly been written by companies and people who are trying to interest us in their products or services?  I also think that it is fair to say that they always appear to be gearing their opinions to the young workers who they expect to buy whatever they are selling.

It has to be said that the internet has not changed that very much although we cannot really complain about it, because if it was not for those companies we would find ourselves paying a lot more for the privilege of being able to use it.

Before the world wide web, it used to be quite hard to get a book published and, even though new innovations such as the Kindle and the internet itself have not had such a devastating effect on the sale of paper books as would have been expected, getting a publisher sufficiently interested in your book to fund the cost of publishing it is still a challenge, although having an e book published or paying to publish has become a lot easier if you can afford it.

But back to the internet; where it is mainly so-called experts who write about the older members of our society, many of them a lot younger than the people they profess to be an authority on.  My question has to be why?

The relatively young bloggers and vloggers (offer their opinions in writing or using film) on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and all the other web and social media sites so freely, while we elders, even the ones who are internet savvy, don’t bother.

We, the over 65s of our world have lots of experiences to offer even if we are unable to write them down and we should be getting our friends and family members to listen to what we say and add to the wealth of knowledge that is already available on the internet.   I feel that what we put in writing now will serve as important information for elders of the future and also as an archive of what life was really like for us at this time.  The second decade of the 21^st century will be gone before we know it and what is found online will provide a large proportion of the fodder that researchers use to make future history documentaries and write future history books.

So, in my opinion, it is up to at least some of us to alter the balance so that it is not only the Companies, experts and youngsters that provide the wealth of the information that is available on the internet, and it is not only written for the young… even if we don’t actually do the writing ourselves.

AH, Brockley