Being a fan of the Underdog, I don't usually get excited about studies from corporate behemoths, even if not too long ago they were the Underdog. Still, gotta hand it to Yahoo! They really captured some good hard data on something I've been convinced about for a while: We want to work for ourselves.

Obviously I don't mean everybody. Many of us like working for The Man. Hell, even solo practitioners work for somebody. What I mean is that at some point in our careers we all want, or at least consider, working on our own.

According to Yahoo!'s second annual survey of entrepreneurial aspirations, two-thirds of American adults (66 percent) say they've considered starting their own businesses. Sixty percent thought that they were "never too old" to start their own business, up 13% from last year's survey.

According to Rich Riley, vice president of small business services at Yahoo,

"The vast majority of people, regardless of age, have entrepreneurial aspirations, and they recognize the power of the Internet in making it easier for them to act on those aspirations and launch small businesses."

Again, I coulda called that one, or rather, Alexis de Tocqueville could have. The French aristocrat who wrote extensively about America during his travels here in the 19th Century had much to say about our annoying optimism. Because democracy is in Americans' blood and because many of our forefathers came here with nothing more than lint in their pockets and created their wealth (rather than inherited it) we have this insane notion that we really can do it on our own.

If that weren't the case I'd be VERY depressed. I grew up thinking it was all possible. No one told me to act my caste.

Charles Handy of the London Business School wrote an eye-opening description of the American work and business ethos, as seen through the lens of a European:

Anyone visiting America from Europe cannot fail to be struck by the energy, enthusiasm, and confidence in their country's future that he or she will meet among ordinary Americans-a pleasing contrast to the world-weary cynicism of much of Europe. Most Americans seem to believe that the future can be better and that they are responsible for doing their best to make it that way. It is an attitude that is both infectious and attractive, and it probably accounts for much of the dynamism of their economy, even if it irritates some Europeans on occasion.

He also mentions that because we, on the whole, earned our lot, we're less restrained about showing it off, giving to charity, and talking bidness. I think of one of my closest friends, a British man, who does very well for himself, and I still don't quite know--after 10 years of friendship--what he does. And yet, when he calls me and asks me how I am I immediately interpret the question to mean, "How's business?" and I proceed to give him the status update of every project on my plate.

So maybe I'm a bit over the top. The point is, Americans take their work more personally. Therefore, it would stand to reason that we'd take on--on a massive scale--the reclamation of our work for ourselves. It's really a reclamation of our lives.

The Yahoo! study made another interesting finding:

75 percent of U.S. adults who go online said that the Internet has made it easier to start a small business.

Yup. The Web has not only made more available to us, but has made us more available to the world. In a talk I did recently for college women contemplating their careers, I mentioned that there is no better time to fast track and begin extracting knowledge from their myriad jobs and the resources available at the click of a mouse. We don't need 20-year tenures anymore to prove ourselves worthy of striking out on our own. We just need some validation from the many people we're connecting with online. And we don't have to quit our jobs; we can dip a toe into self-employment, then a foot, then realize with certainty that there's no other way to go than to pursue our own path. The Web makes this available to anyone willing to work off the clock.

Whether we decide to stay in the office or give self-employment a try, we're getting closer to the day when working for someone other than ourselves is just one of many options. As I said to these women, the attitudes of workers is shifting, the question is no longer, "When do I start?" but more a qualification, "OK, I'll work for you, but you have me ON LOAN."