It has been almost a year since our economy flirted with collapse. It was about this time last year when Lehman Brothers, AIG, Bank of America and a ragtag group of multi-billion dollar megacorps made their way into our collective conscious and reminded us all how fragile our economic system is.

To say that our financial system was close to crumbling would be an understatement, the part of the story that matters though is that it didn’t crumble.

We overcame politics, private interests and a host of compromises, any one of which could have been a death knell, and we came out of it with our heads still firmly attached to our shoulders.

The question that remains is, where do we go from here? That’s what Forbes editor, Carl Lavin asked me to comment on.

Before I get into that, let’s look at a few facts.

• The number of jobs available to graduating college students has diminished.
• The competition for the jobs that remain has increased.
• The barriers to entry to becoming an entrepreneur or freelancer have been toppled by the web.
• Social Media, Social Networking and the web as a whole has made it incredibly easy to collaborate, create, remix and distribute ideas.

When taken apart, none of these points is particularly interesting. In aggregate, however, they are changing the world. We are living in a era where more young people are starting down the path of entrepreneurship. More interesting still, they not only have the skills but the resources to make a real go at it. Never in history has it been easier for someone to get out of college, open their own business and create something that people actually use and investors will actually look at.

Take a peek at Twitter. How many entrepreneurs do you see ambling its halls that haven’t hit 30?

20?

Hell, more and more you are seeing people like Mark Bao whose barely old enough to drive but has probably sold more companies than most of us will start in our careers.

Add to the equation investors who are starting to understand that age isn’t a boundary on the web. That youth and beauty can, in fact, be a significant boon in a world driven by media. Even in a downturn, even with everyone pulling back, they are investing in teams that can adapt and change, often led by people whose only qualification is depthless, raw talent and the drive to push an idea forward.

Finally, Social Media and the growth of the web in the corporate arena has opened up incredible opportunities for people who understand it well. Smart, capable and well read freelancers (many of them young) will have the opportunity to get their foot in the door of huge corporations who need their expert opinions. These people who have been blogging for years, who truly understand the ever shifting landscape of the networks, will be the ones sitting in the boardrooms, not as employees but as trusted consultants.

The United States is a nation of small business owners and small business has and will continue to make up a significant portion of our economic growth. In 2010 I predict that the startups that began their lives in 2007 and 2008 will begin to come into their own or die trying, that the freelancers who are starting their career this year will start to make an impact on corporations hungry for good advice and that entrepreneurs of all stripes, who began their businesses because they couldn’t find a job, will begin to generate new jobs of their own.

The world we live in is shifting. The “dream” is shifting. Fewer and fewer of our best and brightest want to spend their lives working from 9 to 5 doing things they have no passion for. For the first time ever, fewer and fewer of them have to.

How the entire thing will shake out is anyone’s guess but it has never been a more exciting time to be on the front lines.

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