Is there a career that perfectly fits your interests and in which you can reach a high level of achievement? Is there any way to lead a life free of cares, but in which you still seem to have all you could want?

These questions, not as naïve as they may sound, are at the core of the puzzle that Lin strives to answer in The Right Passion Can Define Your Life: 12 Self-Development Tips for the Microcosmic Generation. The “microcosmic generation” of the title refers to a group of people who, in Lin’s observations, have diverse interests and unclear dreams, love to share, and hope to lead a leisurely “ideal lifestyle,” but don’t know how to find their path, leaving them feeling frustrated and powerless.

So who are Lin’s “microcosmic ­generation”?

Generally, says Lin, when people think of a “generation,” they think of a group defined by age or era. But if we define a generation by their way of thinking, we are more likely to get a closer match with trends and shifts in society. “Those facing these problems,” he writes, “are spread across more and more age groups, with even many people in their 40s feeling similarly lost.”

“The microcosmic generation arose through the combination of the digital revolution, globalization, and the trend toward having fewer children. They are accustomed to multitasking, like the computers they are so familiar with, and so their model of thought is like a microcosmos—they specialize in taking scattered information and weaving it together into something useful to them, and they’re used to every­thing revolving around them.”

For the microcosmic generation, this is both an exciting age and an anxiety-ridden one. Information comes thick and fast, productivity has increased over the past several hundredfold, and time and space can be quickly reconfigured and compressed. The world is becoming more scattered and more graphical, and these people have adapted to this change; through immersing themselves in information, figuring things out, and rotating and fitting them all together, they find ways to create little worlds of their own.

Take, for instance, well-known Taiwanese blogger “Mr. 6,” real name George Liu. He is a man of many roles, from electrical engineer to online trend-watcher, and even established a marketing consultancy company on the back of his personal brand. He has created his own planetary system around himself.

Lin’s writing subverts the usual understanding about the new generation, as well as flipping the stereotype of Millenials as being all show, no substance, and unwilling to engage in physical labor. He argues that the passion of the “microcosmics” is not some aimless flailing, as it can seem to the older generation, who have followed a different path. Often these older folks try to force younger ones to settle down and “grow up,” to simply become clones of themselves.

As a sociologist, I was at first thrown off by the use of term “microcosmic.” Gradually, though, I came to accept the author’s line of thought and had to admit that the world today is different from the one I grew up in. I may just be what Lin refers to as a “pre-digital dinosaur,” someone used to a hardcopy world and still adjusting to new media. For example, if someone decides to chat with me on Facebook, I’ll devote my full attention to that in a show of goodwill, but if I try to do another couple of things on top, everything just goes to pot.

The way the new generation communicates is just one of many changes—even more worthy of attention is how their values have changed. The “microcosmics” focus on micro-scale creation, on creating a “cosmos” that revolves around them. Becoming a big-shot in politics, business, or just in general are no longer the only choices for the younger generation. By way of example, Lin writes about a young man who graduated from National Tsing Hua University with a degree in electrical engineering, Wu Po­chang. While at college, Wu joined a band, which released an album. After he traveled to the US to continue his studies after graduation, he realized that music was his true passion. When he returned to Taiwan, he continued to follow that path, going on to create Taiwan’s largest online music download platform, In­die­vox. His entrepreneurial success is down to making good use of his particular talents and constantly pulling in resources from around him.

Lin also subverts the traditional idea of social mobility, instead explaining the life strategy of the microcosmic generation as defined by a personalized, mix-and-match aesthetic. In the past, everyone had to fight to climb the ladder of success, but today you can create your own personal place in a universe that revolves around you.

More importantly, the contrast Lin draws between the “climbers” and the “revolvers” points toward changes and developments in social structure. In the past, human society has been seen as progressing from industrialization to post-industrial and on to digitalization as we head into the Information Age. This kind of linear perspective has created historical narratives focused only on the major players, but Lin sees the microcosmics as the birth of a new social phenomenon—they don’t want to replace the big heroes, nor do they want to be victims trampled by those big heroes. They simply want harmonious, vibrant lives that revolve around their interests.

Maybe we are at the dawn of a new age, or maybe the world is just the same as it’s always been. What is different, though, is that these microcosmics are everywhere and have us old dinosaurs surrounded. They are the product of a free, democratic society, symbols of the Information Age and the rapid rise in productivity.

A new demographic has risen, and while there may still be plenty of aimless asteroids that will burn out and crash to Earth, there are even more new worlds being opened up for the future. These worlds, the microcosmics, don’t seek to replace the existing systems of control, nor do they want to take things over; what they are doing, as they grow in number and spread more and more widely, is changing the rules of the game.

Rather than try to force them into old molds, the “pre-digital dinosaurs” in positions of power need to welcome the microcosmics with open arms!

(Wu Chung-shen is an assistant ­professor of sociology at Fu Jen Catholic University)