My son Tommy turned six months old yesterday, and much like the blogosphere, he seems to be growing at an unimaginable rate. He’s not crawling or walking or talking yet, but he is very plugged-in.

• He has his own Web page—so grandparents hundreds of miles away can see the latest pictures from his photocast.

• He has his own software—a program called AlphaBaby that flashes a shape, letter or number on the screen of my Mac when he taps (slams his baby fists on) any key. AlphaBaby includes age appropriate colors and sounds that will follow him through newborn to toddler developmental stages.

• He seems to know what a cell phone is—at least he smiles wide and bright whenever I talk on it—maybe he prefers my professional voice over my baby voice. How soon until Firefly offers phones for infants?

I’m probably going to buy an iCrib. This product aimed at the “new-parents-will-buy-almost-anything” market is a dock for an iPod that includes a multi-colored nightlight and timer to help soothe baby to sleep as he listens to custom built playlists--Tommy likes the Beatles, Orbital and Sufjan Stevens.

As he grows—and I race to keep up with the ever expanding interactive landscape—I can’t help but wonder when the little guy will pass me up.

How soon until he is nuts over a video game that looks like the holograms in the original Star Wars? When will I demonstrate parental uncoolness by naively asking about the hottest kid trend? What age will he be when his knowledge of technology passes mine? I’m guessing about age 10.

Regardless of what future embarrassment I may unleash upon my son, one thing is for certain: Today’s iBaby generation (let’s roughly define it as those born from 1999 to 2014—the babies of Gen X’ers) will be more plugged in—and even less aware of it than even today’s most cutting-edge techno-geeks.

And it won’t be about MySpace, YouTube or SecondLife. By the time Tommy is five, those sites could be as passé as a cell phone with a cord or my old ColecoVision. The iBaby generation will grow up with tools that some of us fumble with today. Technology will be more pervasive—which also means it will be less a shiny new tool and more a normal part of every day life.

The realities of atomization and social networking won’t be a trend for iBabies--it will be how they live and communicate. The ever present use of multi-tasking technologies will be as natural to them as their great-grandparents dialing a rotary phone.

Why should Tommy buy a record when he can simply get the songs he wants and criss-cross genres of his own choosing? Why would he watch an entire 60 minute news broadcast when he could get just those video bytes that match his tagged preferences delivered to his hand-held plasma Nintendo DS5?

The iBabies being soothed to sleep on customized playlists of Beatles and Sufjan on their iCrib are being reared into an era where they will choose from deconstructed multiple messages over various electronic mediums at blink speed—and they will be too plugged-in to tolerate it any other way.