Defining success is elusive—a shape-shifting ideal that reinvents itself generation to generation. But knowing where we come from, and what we’re dreaming of, can speak volumes about where the industry is headed.

When I was 13, my dream job was to create special effects for sci-fi movies. Twenty-seven years later, I have never created a special effect, and never worked on a movie. I’m not mad about it. In retrospect, that particular dream didn’t have all that much to do with me and everything to do with how well CGI-heavy movies like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 were marketed to bowl cut–sporting teenage boys in the early 1990s.

Dream jobs are like that. They say a little bit about the dreamer, and a lot about the culture that surrounds them. A recent study of American children revealed that far more kids today want to be YouTube influencers than astronauts—that says something (even if we don’t like it).