Oscar Selfie via Forbes.com

By David Vinjamuri, Jul. 1, 2014, Forbes.com

We are in the middle of one of the most important and least appreciated social transformations of the postwar era. It is changing the way that established companies sell their products while propelling unknown brands to the forefront. Everyone knows someone involved in this cultural shift, but nobody is talking about it – not as a whole. Or we don’t realize that we’re talking about it when we do. We’re talking about selfies when we should be talking about indies.

When Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres arranged a group selfie of movie stars, it broke Twitter and set a viral sharing record. A stream of cultural commentary followed, with Pew Research notingthat half of millennials have taken self-portraits and Charles Blow for the New York Times calling millennials “The Self(ie) Generation”.

Selfie is almost synonymous with “selfish” – as if millennials are just Baby Boomers with iPhones. But there is a more interesting aspect of that moment: the photo itself was very good. An actor – Bradley Cooper – was handed someone else’s phone and took a near professional quality photo. It suggests that technology has advanced to the point where creativity isn’t controlled by a demarcated group of professionals. That’s the trend that matters. Big advances in technology and connectedness of the past decade have pushed amateurs into professional territory and persuaded corporate workers to go solo. And it’s not just millennials who are departing the mother ship.