Every generation has a name, we've had the Baby Boomers, Generation X and the MTV Generation. I don't know who is to blame but apparently our generation (i.e. those born in the late 80s) has now been semi-officially given the name the "iGeneration", a term coined by American rapper MC Lars. While naming something is the first step towards understanding what it actually is, there hasn't been much discourse into what are the things that define our generation, what it actually means to be us? I think the most obvious starting point is our relationship with technology.

What defines our generation is first and foremost, the digital revolution. We are the generation that has grown up using computers and the Internet as a part of our every day lives. We all own computers, mobile phones and iPods and consider them as commodities rather than luxuries. We love technology because it makes our lives more convenient and lets us carry our friends, a camera and our entire music collections all in the same pocket.

The effects of technology on our day-to-day lives are perhaps most apparent in communications. We talk and text our friends on mobile phones, spend hours on MSN messenger and build communities through websites like Myspace/Bebo/Facebook. It can easily be argued that our reliance on technology for communications is the rison 4 d dtrioration o lnguge . Thanks to the Internet, our social focus has moved from the local to the international and appropriate means of communication could only be found through technology. Other reasons for the prominance electornics has taken in our social activites are the fact that it's cheap and that it makes us feel better about ourselves, one may have only a few good friends in real life but on Myspace he can have thousands.

What about the arts? art and literature are certainly moving away from traditional forms and are becoming more open. Home made journalism in the form of blogs and home made radio in the form of podcasts are becoming more and more mainstream. Platforms Magazine is enough of an example to see that something is changing. In the past it would have been printed and sold to a very small readership, growing would be a slow and painful process and the entire endeavour would be very expensive and tiring. Publishing online lets us reach a potential audience of millions and also provide music and (in the near future) short films with relative ease.

With file sharing allowing easy free music and iTunes offering legal music for a small amount of money, the world of music has been turned upside down and music is becoming more of a service than a product. Artists make less of their money from selling singles and albums and more from live performances and advertising. The whole industry is changing, from the days where the London Underground was the starting point for many musicians, today it is the internet. A statement to that are the Arctic Monkeys, a band that owes its success and massive following to the internet. Musical tastes are also much more varied, if The Beatles were the 60's and Nirvana the 90's there is no one band that has a similar universal appeal and influence nowadays. The multi-culturalism of the Internet allows for The Libertines, Jack Johnson, Coldplay and Greenday to co-exist in the popular taste all in the same time without a stylistic link or one clear cultural leader.

The main criticism of our generation is that we are politically apathetic, we are not. We all have opinions on issues such as the war in Iraq, oil, the environment and our personal freedoms. In many ways the involvement of youth in politics is becoming more issue-based than party-based. While many hold opinions, only a small minority is politically active. Many explain this by the fact that when the economy is doing well people are not concerned with issues that do not directly affect them.

Trying to define our generation is not easy and this definition is by no means concise. Ultimately, our generation is still open to interpertation, it is what we make of it. Go and make something happen, that's what the iGeneration is all about.