The mobile generation: How technology is transforming our landscape

Take a moment to stop what you’re doing. Look around your immediate environment for a second. Chances are you’ll spot a multitude of winding wires, flashing screens and pocket-sized devices all silently and diligently connecting, communicating, and up/downloading all the latest news and tragedies.

It’s become so commonplace for anyone born before the nineties, that a conscious decision to take note of their presence is what’s needed to remember that this tech is all around us. And for those who entered the world in the new millennium, well, it’s fair to wonder if they can even conceive of a life without silicon?

This isn’t an explorative piece into whether or not a tablet device should replace the baby rattle. This is a friendly reminder, a Facebook poke, to jog your memory that we’ve really never had it so good. The rise of technology – more specifically, the technology that connects us – has changed the game irreversibly. The question is, however, whether or not we realise it.

Opportunities have always been there for self-expression or chasing a dream; people have constantly kept diaries and single-handedly built corporate empires from scratch. The difference now is that, since the dawn of the mobile generation, our creativity is able to explore new territory, and opportunity is becoming ever more democratised.

Take, for example, America, a nation founded on the universal right to “the pursuit of happiness”. A country forged by the common desire to live the American Dream. Those concepts came to life in 1776, but never more so than in recent years has it become so accessible to so many.

As reported in more detail by Forbes, the 2011 US Census Bureau report on Nonemployer Statistics stated that the US hosted 22.5 million one-person businesses, or, as the census labels them “nonemployer firms”. That huge chunk of people is full of success stories, some of which may come as a shock. Out of 22.5 million nonemployer firms, 1.6 million posted sales between $100,000 and $249,999. And this striking statistic is only beaten when you consider that 368 of the nonemployer firms posted sales north of $5 million.

Achieving this decades ago would have required taking big loans and even bigger risks, not to mention a big bricks and mortar HQ. So how are so many securing their places on the market today? The answer is all around us: technology. All you need to bring an idea or business to life is some spare change, an email address and the will to start in the first place.

IT companies are popping up all over the virtual world, offering everyday dreamers and entrepreneurs an affordable and straightforward foot in the door. Just like cars and laptops before them, websites are now the mass produced commodity, so much so that it seems they’ve digitalised the American dream.

And the mobile generation, from San Francisco to Sydney and beyond, are best equipped to fulfil it.

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