Have we become nomads?

I recently came across an internal article I wrote based on work I did at Apple. It was a position paper from 1999 proposing a longitudinal study on the impact of mobility on society. With the recent push for people to return to the office, I found it refreshing to revisit the topic from a point of view expressed long before the pandemic, or the iPhone. When the internet was still novel and bubble had not yet burst. This was a time when designers really thought about the technologies they were helping to invent, and worked hard to understand the impact they could have on the people and the environment.

D I G I T A L   N O M A D S
The new paradigm of the e-culture

Having been in the world of anthropology, if asked to define the effect of technology on contemporary nomadic society my first inclination would be to review the diffusion patterns of the technology(s) within the society, focusing on the way in which the new technologies had supplanted existing conventions. Specifically exploring the impact it had had in altering the traditional and indigenous behaviors of the people in question relative to the interests and intentions of those external to the society. Additionally the impacts this technology would have on the local ecology, economy, and the need for non-native resources. As well the underlying intentions of those who were responsible for its initial introduction, and even perhaps even their methods for the distribution of the technology(s).

While I can see how this would be an interesting topic for an anthropological discussion, there is a larger discussion waiting to happen on the topic of nomads.

I have to wonder if perhaps a more interesting discussion would be to approach the concept of  “nomads” from the perspective of how new technologies, innovations such as palmtops, laptops, cell phones, and especially the internet, have combined to create a new group of itinerant people within a landscape of ever changing organizations and industries. This is not to say that we could not learn a great deal from studying legitimate nomadic societies use of technology, specifically in the area of how they facilitate and manage both their internal and external communications both with their people and with other cultures and societies. But the idea that what we call “society” has some how been reverted to an earlier stage in its development because of the very advances propagated by that society is without question at least provocative.

A common dictionary (1) definition for 'nomad' is, "a member of a people who have no fixed residence but move from place to place usually seasonally and within a well defined territory". As contemporary organizations transition from producing goods to the harvesting and serving information, the relationship of the constituency to the organization in which they participate as consumers, members, subscribers, etc., is no longer geographically bound by factors such as physical proximity, distribution, and natural resources. People are free to utilize the best services for their needs regardless of where it is located--if, indeed, they even know or care where it is located. And make no mistake those services include their employer. Further as competing organizations develop to take advantage of this new found independence the individual contributors within these companies are themselves freed from the constraints geo-specific infrastructures.

Bound by nothing other than their own personal knowledge, skills, and experiences these knowledge workers (2) no longer need to live within commuting distance to the office, in fact they may not even live within the same state or even country as the office. No longer needing to rely on some parent organization for the physical infrastructure necessary to communicate and interact with their peers, these people can redefine proximity through the dynamic infrastructure offered by cell phones, email and the internet. This geographic freedom is made possible not only by the technology but by the fact these people are knowledge workers and that as such the organizations in which they interact value their contribution based on their intelligence and experience, not their manual labors. These modern digital nomads can now easily move from project to project, and even from organization to organization, without loosing their ability to contribute and interact with their peers, their 'tribe' as it were is no longer fixed.

This nomadic-like behavior is best understood in studying the relationship of an employee to a company. The decision to move from one company to another is based on which organization (or oasis) has the most fertile offerings such as: problems to solve, office settings, stock options, salary, personal development, support for the individual's ideas, reputation for innovation, cutting edge technologies, projected IPO, etc.. Employees make the decision to move in order to both maximize their personal growth, professionally and economically, and to put themselves in place where they feel they can contribute the most value and intern gain the most value.

Often complete teams of people, sharing common interests and values and with a mutual desire to stay together, will make such a transition. These bands of people move collectively as a means of maintaining their professional and personal relationships while also collectively taking advantage of the richer offerings provided by the new organization.

As like true nomads, these digitally enhanced wayfarers read their “environment” learning from the indigenous flora and fauna where the opportunities lay ahead. By combining the subtle clues from the local terrain with their deep knowledge of the region these tribes can always sense in what direction the nearest oasis lies; or when the oasis in which they are currently harbored is on the verge of becoming dry.

While on a global level this type of transitory behavior is not necessary common yet, its growth is coming from what many consider to be the leading edge of American society, Silicon Valley, and as such gives one pause to wonder if these digital nomads will become more prevalent in the coming years. This concept of nomadic behaviors have even greater implications when expanded to include other types of social organizations such as the contemporary family, friends and professional colleagues, schools and universities, and even to less permanent structures such as conferences and their attendees. It is important to realize that in this discussion a “nomad” is not an individual aimlessly roaming the terrain rather these technologically enhanced pilgrims, created through their use of communication tools and services, while itinerant do not wander. These people are not without direction nor without connections to each other and their world. Indeed the movement of these people is perhaps the only stable factor in their experience; like a Micronesian sailor in his canoe, they stand still under the stars as the ocean and the world move around them.

With an increasing rate of turn over in what were once stable social institutions, companies which once provided the primary organization and structure for our daily experience are now mere rest stops for us. We have instinctively responded to the change technology affords us by evolving into a nomadic culture in an attempt to organize our lives. Though the organizations in which we work, play and socialize come and go, our interconnectedness is maintained through our adaptation of the technology and our desire to be a part of a larger community.

R E F E R E N C E S

1) WWWebster Dictionary copyright © 1999 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated : http://www.m-w.com/netdict.htm

2) "The Marks are on the Knowledge Worker Accessing and Using Stored Documents",  Alison Kidd Proceedings of ACM CHI'94 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 1994 v.1 p.186-191