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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."

This discourse on politics of lies, dis­tortion and disinformation, completes the trilogy of the "The Politics of" series put together to debunk the recent anti-Buhari campaign. It is only natural that I make ref­erence to some of the earlier so-called "Six­teen 'Sins' of General Buhari" in the course of addressing the impulsive mendacity of the Buhari traducers.

Hutt City Libraries' innovative digital literacy programme Stepping UP, has returned to five Hutt City Libraries after a record number enrolments in 2014.

If you are a job seeker with an understanding of coding - even the basics - you've got a competitive edge that employers are seeking.

Rwanda, ICDL to advance digital literacy

An online initiative to raise money for digital literacy programs in Hamilton has netted $22,660 after a two-month campaign.

As a step to bridge help this large section of the Indian society with low or no technological knowledge, a Digital Literacy Programme is to be launched to train people in basic use of technology.

Whenever the terrorist threat is increased, as it has been since the tragic events in Paris last week, so too are the calls from politicians to increase the powers of the people they employ to protect the public from such threats.

President Barack Obama said Friday that police and spies should not be locked out of encrypted smartphones and messaging apps, taking his first public stance in a simmering battle over private communications in the digital age.

Britain's security services have acknowledged they have the worldwide capability to bypass the growing use of encryption by internet companies by attacking the computers themselves.

Despite myriad health information standards and a landmark law to protect patient privacy, it appears insurance giant Anthem (ANTM) didn't encrypt personal data of 80 million of its customers, according to several news reports.

Update: After this article appeared, Werner Koch informed us that he was awarded a one-time grant of $60,000 from Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative. Werner told us he only received permission to disclose it after our article published. Meanwhile, since our story was posted, donations flooded Werner's website donation page and he reached his funding goal of $137,000. In addition, Facebook and the online payment processor Stripe each pledged to donate $50,000 a year to Koch's project.

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.

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.