We would like to welcome you to this Web site dedicated to the youth of today, and the content and research of the book Growing Up Digital.

While working on this project we encountered many dilemmas about how to present a Web site about such a complex group in a way that would be appealing to adults as well as the N-Geners to whom this book is dedicated.

Making a user-friendly Web site with concepts attractive to a wide variety of audiences was our primary goal. By creating such a site, we wanted to invite many younger Net-surfers, since their presence on the site is essential to its success.

Growing Up Digital is a book dealing with N-Geners, their wish to immerse themselves with the digital technology and the issues that affect their progress with the new media. Having an N-Gen friendly site also meant interactivity.

So we sought out a group of young people to help us. The result was a group of kids from around the world who assisted in the writing of the book. This also included a group of kids from Toronto based KidsNRG who later helped design this site.

Bojan Pavlovic, Javeed Sukhera, Thanh Phu, Dan Sommer, Marcos Eirin, Michael Furdyk of KidsNRG.

Gautam
explaining his Chapter logo for "The Louder Echo"...

This logo was designed based on the idea that the Web is one of the best resources of information out there. Really, I had thought about what the chapter was about: echoes throughout generations. I decided that in order to create an interesting effect, I would take elements of the past and elements of the future and mix them to create the present echo. Thus, it only seemed appropriate that I use a symbol most everyone has seen. I needed, in addition to an image with high exposure, noise. There must be the feeling of sound in the image. Then it occurred to me. What better picture to use than that of "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. I had seen this image many times and thought that it was rather appropriate as it contained emotion as well has the expression of noise.

I am not an art fanatic, but the image looked like it would do the trick. After doing some research on who painted "The Scream," (I had only known the title), I found a high resolution image and cropped the image around the person who was screaming. I then added the rings of sound to represent echoes. Finally, I needed the future element in the image. I decided that the universal symbol for technology is the microchip. Thus, I took several images from different sources and mixed them. Then I gave the violet overtone to it.

Deanna
giving her views on the influence of technology on the social fabric of our society

Technology plays an important role in our every-day life styles. From music, computers, communication, and to the way we generally live, technology is the basis of it all. We can now travel by means of automobiles, compose music from a single instrument, and communicate with people from around the world. Communication is now made simple with e-mail, faxing, radio, television, telephones, and publications. Mass production also plays an important role in our lives. Thousands of products can be made by the use of machinery in factories. Without technology, our environment would be very different.

The N-Generation isn't just youth, it's the baby-boomers as well. Just about all ages are on the Internet now, and it is expanding rapidly. It will definitely change the world, and perhaps help people not to be so prejudice about other peoples' cultures. I believe it will help today's society to be more understanding of others.