It’s a different world than the one that I grew up in.

This will being as one of those “back in my day” stories about how the times are changing before the older generation can adapt to the new one. (Subsequently, the older I get, the more I realize that every generation becomes the ‘older’ generation relatively swiftly).

I grew up in the 1980s and 90s. I recorded television shows on a video cassette tape and watched them on the VCR. I put music cassettes into tape recorders. I used rewind and fast forward on both. I played the original Nintendo video game and marveled at the advances in technology, because before that playing computer games required entering code on the T.I. Basic or playing a pixel-laden Atari.

Then in high school, technology advanced. I got my first Email address and could browse the Internet through AOL dial-up, where you paid per minute that you were online and being on your computer meant your phone-line was busy. I could jump into chat rooms and talk to people anywhere in the world and it was incredible! Communication and media were forever replaced with Email instead of snail mail. Now news and television shows and movies could be viewed online, pornography could be downloaded instead of purchased in a store, and shopping could be arranged through websites and products sent through the mail. Everything was different. And companies launched along with it that soon became media enterprises: Yahoo, Google, GMail, America Online, and many more.

Then in 2001, as a young college student, I bought my first cell phone. It was only $200 per month, and I could make calls in a local area, up to 200 minutes per month! There was no data, no camera, no internet, no long distance, and no texting (those would all come in the next few years), but I could carry a phone in my pocket and use it whenever I wanted! And the cell phone companies expanded to epic proportions. Verizon and Cricket and Sprint and

Obviously, technology has skyrocketed since then, the inventions of the last few decades dominating nearly every market. And now, as the Millennial generation grows with it, everything has changed. Social media has now become the primary form of media, television looking more to us now like radio did to me as a kid. And the company giants that dominate the international landscapes are all associated with the internet: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube, ITunes, Paypal, Tinder, Amazon, Craigslist, MySpace, Ebay, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Uber, and on and on.

A few years ago, an app craze spread across the country, and downloadable games and programs made millions for quick-thinking, technologically-savvy entrepreneurs. Angry Birds and MyFitnessPal and apps of every genre and type came out by the hundreds of thousands. Apps to help you turn poetry into music, to allow you to save your photos with new filters, to turn your car into a taxi cab, to find live music near you, to count your burned Calories as you walk, to find local singles for sex.

And suddenly, there are millions of home-based businesses out there, people making thousands of dollars per month by uploading _____ (fill in the blank) and running advertising on their content, which generates a small amount of income per click. There are people sharing recipes and parenting tips on blogs, there are jokes or photos or tips of the day on websites, there are news commentaries with millions of followers.

On YouTube itself, there are thousands of individual channels that make their owners tens of thousands of dollars (and in some cases millions of dollars) per years. A woman who does make-up tutorials, a man who records himself playing video games, a man who plays pranks, a man who dances in his underwear to pop songs, a doctor with medical advice, a massage therapist who gives self-massage tips, a girl who runs lyrics to songs through translation technology and then sings the songs in broken English, a scientist who melts things, an adult woman who plays with kids’ toys, a man who records people from other countries eating American foods for the first time. With just the right amount of sound and video quality, an energetic personality, and some basic editing skills, there are thousands of Millennials running successful companies out of their living rooms.

And this, in many ways, is the new America. Which leads me to wonder, what kinds of ideas have yet to be discovered? And where is technology going from here–what is it about today’s advanced social media culture that is going to seem archaic in ten years time? What companies will still be launching, what new forms will advertising and television take, what millions have yet to be made?

And what mark will I end up leaving along the way?