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Don't let the word "digital" fool you in all this talk about how difficult it is for digital natives and digital immigrants to communicate. The truth is that this generational gap between the so-called digital natives (the generation of people born during or after the rise of digital technologies) and the digital immigrants (people born before the advent of digital technology) doesn't actually have to do with technology. The real issue is that the two worldviews that they represent are so different.

This week, though, I started to think there was something else to that lonely sound, and my connection with it. Technology was still at the root - a book about tech, actually. Michael Harris's fascinating The End of Absence, which should be required reading for anyone born before 1985 (and anyone else interested in tech). Harris's topic is us - "digital immigrants". The last generation that will remember the world before the internet. He writes: "We have in this brief historical moment… a very rare opportunity… These are the few days when we can still notice the difference between Before and After… There's a single difference that we feel most keenly; and it's also the difference that future generations will find hardest to grasp. That is the end of absence - the loss of lack. The daydreaming silences in our lives are filled; the burning solitudes are extinguished."

Today's banks must be able to market to so-called digital natives - twenty-somethings who grew up with computers in the house, phones in their pockets, and a Facebook page to chronicle their exploits. For them, checking balances and paying bills online is not a convenience - it is banking. They may make the rare branch visit to address a problem, but they'd much prefer handling those issues via FaceTime, if only their banks could get their act together and make that service available.