It was strangely disturbing to read that Martha Lane Fox is going to get us all on-line by 2015.  My daughter was really non-plussed by this as she is on-line all the time – and quarter past eight is when she gets up to make her 8.30AM college classes.  My mum, however, is waging a single woman war against  the Internet.  Why shop on line when you can stand in a cold bus queue for an hour, pursuing a packet of sausages with the same grizzly determination that was once a feature of our hunter gatherer ancestors.

My generation stands neatly in the middle of this culture and technology clash.  I can’t understand how my daughter can operate three internet devices simultaneously – or indeed why she wants to.  Equally I am frustrated by my mother’s obstinate refusal to stop writing letters that need stamps or engage with technology that would help her in so many routine tasks.  Now my mother likes a cause and doesn’t like to lose.  I remember when the last - or last but one - Government tried to take her pension book away.   The idea of course was that the Department of Social Security (at the time, DWP now) and the Post Office would finally embrace the inevitable and instead of printing very expensive and easy to defraud pension books they would pay benefits straight into your bank account.    My mother would have none of this and campaigned (yes, in writing, with stamps) to maintain her right to a pension book.  She was quite infirm at the time, so she couldn’t actually collect the pension using the book and so I would have to grab some time from work,  go and queue at the Post Office, take the money out – and, yes, cross the road to pay it into her bank.  Looking back on this now she was either a passionate defender of the right to choose - or she really didn’t like me very much.

So Martha, you might think your challenge is trying to get BT or whoever to lay thousands of miles of thicker cable, but your real battle will be to make the internet easier to use.  This isn’t just about clicking on the internet explorer icon, it’s about the complexity and time it takes to register for services (anyone ever forgotten their 128 character HMRC log-on – only about 10 million or so of us on March 30th), filling in on-line forms, proving identity and working out which bit of information will be needed by which service provider.  It’s not so much Big Brother watching you, as the whole House and Davina McCall too.   Press the wrong key too many times and you get evicted...

At GB we’re pioneering the use of on-line identity tokens and working to make the process of accessing services across the internet easier.  We can see the value of the “single sign on” process but this time outside the enterprise IT environment.   This will allow citizens to choose what services to access, what information to share and will not need them to constantly repeat the registration process as they cross between booking a refuse collection with your local authority, paying your TV license or shopping for exotic holidays.  This is going to make the process of transacting online safer, easier and transfer more control to the citizen.

Martha, if my mother is to use the internet to order services she will need a clear incentive and the process will need to be simple.  Otherwise these silver not-quite-yet surfers will be collecting their stamps and will be out to write to you.  With pens.  And ink.  These are dangerous adversaries and they fight dirty.  Good luck.

Nick