The Unfettered Age
It’s not my father’s environment
Sure – I’m the youngest of six, but I’ve been around a while.
I’ve always found it interesting that my father experienced so much transition in his life. He was born in 1926 and lived through a whole lot of interesting times.
Myself – I remember thinking as a kid that all the huge changes had happened before my birth – what else was there? And the thought that struck me today – is how much things really have changed since my own youth.
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What limits remain?
Sure – lots of people write about stuff that “kids today” have never experienced let alone heard of. You know, pet rocks, disco, three channels on the television (plus PBS), and that “new” game called trivial pursuit…
But I’m going beyond that to the way things are done.
What can’t you do today?
Publishing
This is an easy one for me to say – anyone can publish pretty much anything they want.
Sure, the “digital” world is easy enough, but also print.
I’ve got two titles available across the globe in paperback form, sell electronic versions in multiple formats, and never once negotiated away my rights to an agent or publisher. (The Revised LinkedIn Personal Trainer)
(and you can too)
Scholarly research
Yes, the internet, google, Wikipedia and all sorts of other tools make huge amounts of information available – for free.
But once again, I’m looking beyond the obvious.
I’ve been working with some brilliant folks over the last couple of years on a project that recently published in the journal “Energy Policy“. Our paper is “Energy management under policy and technology uncertainty“.
The authors live in three different locations, and I’ve never actually met two of them in person!
When I was a kid, the best you had available was the Encyclopedia Britannica – and you had to hope it wasn’t too out of date. There was no concept of “working with other people” that didn’t involve going over to the other person’s home or office.
In addition to working together while far apart, social media makes it oh-so-easy to find others that share your passion.
Knowledge and relationships aren’t limited by geography any longer.
Business tools
Sure, it’s a bit of a hassle to setup, operate, and manage business transactions – but it’s certainly doable.
You know that book I’ve made available – I can sell it to anyone across the world as a pdf while accepting both credit cards and paypal. They get the book, I get a few dollars deposited directly into my business bank account.
I always thought business activity like accepting credit cards was unavailable to “common people” like myself. Guess that’s not the case any longer…
Want to auction items off? Sell through a global network? Advertise worldwide?
Do I need to add the links?
You can set everything up for yourself as well.
Travel
Perhaps it’s the exchange of information that makes the world seem smaller, but I’m willing to suggest that it isn’t quite as hard as it used to be to get around.
Across the country or across the world.
On the local level, it might pose some degree of difficulty to reach the extremes of the US, but it’s certainly doable.
On the global level, I follow Chris Guillebeau, and he’s having a heck of a good time traveling the world. His success so far? 185 of 193 UN member countries as of August 6th, 2012… If you’re interested, his new book: The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
(Notice – he’s combined traveling, publishing, and business tools…)
What are you interested in?
There’s no time like today.
The age where the only way to make a living is to trade the hours of your day to someone else for a bi-weekly paycheck is over. In fact, I’ll go so far as to suggest that trading your life for a paycheck was never really in your best interests to begin with. So get on with it and figure out what you’re here for.
And if you think something stands in your way – I bet you haven’t reached out to find some way around it;-)
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