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Your faithful writer,
Dr. Daniel Smith

Most of us have heard of digital nomads. The term is generally used to describe people who work remotely and are able to live wherever they want, regardless of where their employer or business is based.

Many digital nomads use their freedom and flexibility to travel to different countries, spending a month or a few weeks in one location before moving to the next.

If you look on Instagram, you’ll find countless influencers who split their time between Bali and Barcelona. (See the meme below)

The trend of digital nomadism was popularized during the COVID pandemic.

Suddenly, work-from-home policies and the emergence of widespread remote work enabled many people to move away from expensive cities like New York or San Francisco, where they previously had to live due to their jobs.

You might be surprised to learn that the idea of digital nomadism predates COVID by several decades. 

As early as the 1960s, futurists and technologists were speculating about the ways that new information technology could enable people to return to the nomadic lifestyle that was the norm for humans for much of our history.

Let’s dive into the rabbit hole & learn about the fascinating history of the digital nomad idea.

P.S. This will be the first part of a two-part newsletter on the topic of digital nomads.

The second one will focus on the recent popularization of digital nomad lifestyles and the questions it raises about the nature of work and location in our lives.

The Pre-History of Digital Nomadism

We can trace the roots of the digital nomad idea to the 1960s, when technologists, futurists, and other smart folks began to speculate on the ways that new media technology would change the world — and humanity.

“The Global Village” concept was coined by Marshall McLuhan (who famously appeared in Annie Hall) to describe a world in which high-speed information tech effectively made physical distance irrelevant, allowing us to connect with one another no matter how far away we are.

We now live in a “global village” where we can FaceTime with friends around the world in high definition and where companies can have employees from five continents working together in real-time.

Electronic cottage: Futurist Alvin Toffler introduced the idea of the “electronic cottage” in 1980 as part of his predictions about how computer networks will enable workers to work remotely from their homes.

For him, the emergence of the “electronic cottage” would revolutionize society:

The term digital nomad was popularized by the 1997 book Digital Nomad, which tells us how “current and future technological possibilities, combined with our natural urge to travel, will once again allow mankind to live, work, and exist on the move.”

The first real digital nomad

Let me introduce you to a peculiar and fascinating man named Steven K. Roberts, seen in the photo below.

Roberts spent much of the 1980s cycling across the U.S. on a high-tech bike that carried a portable computer, becoming the world’s first digital nomad in the process.

He wrote extensively about his experiences and on the possibilities for new lifestyles that computers and the Internet would enable.

In 1994, Roberts proposed a project that could be seen as the first digital nomad community. 

He tried to assemble an aquatic nomadic community named the Technonomadic Flotilla (cool name, I know) that would sail around the world together, working remotely and living communally with one another. It didn’t happen, but the idea is fascinating.

ART OF THE DAY

Thank you for reading. Please reply to this email if you have any thoughts or feedback.

Yours,
Dan