The metaphor of the modern nomads has been haunting theoretical literature for such a long time that its credibility has begun to appear more than a little strained. Yet in the middle of 2008, the highly reputable British economics magazine, the Economist, published a special section bearing the title, “Nomads at last”, in which it was argued that the Age of the Digital Nomads had finally arrived after having been falsely proclaimed so frequently in the past. The concept of the modern urban nomads was presumably coined by Marshall McLuhan, the legendary media theorist, in the 1960s and 1970s. In his books, McLuhan painted a brief picture of the mobile employees of the future, who would be on the go around the globe almost constantly and would no longer need a home. In the 1980s, the French economist Jacques Attali – one of President Francois Mitterrand’s advisors – used the term to describe a future in which society would split into a highly mobile jet-set elite and an uprooted working class. In the 1990s, Tsugio Makimoto and David Manner wrote a book with a title containing the term “digital nomads”, which above all praised the blessings of the latest mobile devices.
But the Economist believes that all of these visions were illusionary. At the time they were promulgated, technology had not reached today’s advanced stage. True, there were a lot of different devices, but they were not yet connected to one another. The image of the modern nomads at that time displayed them dragging all sorts of portable technology around with them so that they could exist – more in line with the image of an astronaut than that of a Bedouin. The real trend observable today, according to the Economist, has existed for only a few years because the modern nomads, who are actually worthy of the name, are like their ancestors in the desert: they are defined by what they leave behind, not by what they take with them. Modern nomads do not have any paper documents because they access all of their documents electronically. Frequently, they do not even have a laptop – a BlackBerry or iPhone is enough. All of the information they require can be retrieved online.
Moreover, the modern definition of the digital nomads no longer necessarily entails that they do a lot of traveling. “They may be teenagers in Oslo, Tokyo, or small-town America just as well as globetrotting CEOs,” notes the Economist. Manuel Castells, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, says: “Uninterrupted connection is the critical element, not movement.” James Katz, professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, even believes that this development will lead to a “historical re-integration” of our work and private spheres. People in pre-industrial society worked where they lived. It was not until the factories of industrial society, with their division of labor, and the gigantic modern bureaucracies came along that the work and private spheres got separated because workers and civil servants had to be gathered into one place if they were to work efficiently. Today, says Katz, the two areas are once again becoming mixed. We can work where we live and vice-versa.
So an idea which was prophesied at the beginning of the 1990s by MIT researcher Nicholas Negroponte is now beginning to appear in the reality of our lives. More or less concurrently with his vision of the mobile Internet nomads and knowledge workers of the New Economy, a second idealized picture of a new work culture arose which is now just becoming realistic: the glamorous and yet often job-related international jet set which was praised by the British magazine ‘Wallpaper’, published by Tyler Brûlé. Retro-futuristic hotels in Beirut or Hanoi were presented alongside new cell phone models, anti-jetlag tips for frequent travelers, and shopping ideas for globetrotters with a sure sense of style. At the time, this may have looked like unrealistic technological dreaming or hedonistic high-gloss fantasy, but changes in technological and social parameters have today suddenly turned it into a tangible option: a mixture of Brûlé and Negroponte is not a bad set of guidelines for professional happiness.
If the daily commute to the office becomes obsolete thanks to new technology, we can – carrying the idea to its logical conclusion – do our work at places which were technically and financially inaccessible to our mothers and fathers. For example: I am writing these lines in a thoroughly affordable, yet unbelievably tasteful hotel room in Shanghai. There was never any question that the Internet connection via WLAN is free of charge. Room service has just brought some fresh fruit. The fantastic new tailored shirts which I have ordered for 20 dollars each will be delivered in just a few moments, and later I will be meeting some friends for dinner. Only a few months ago, I was a permanently employed office slave in Germany, sitting at the same desk in the same building day in, day out, and not going home until it was dark outside. Just tell me which variation sounds better ...
Tyler Brûlé has in the meantime become publisher of another publication which is even more interesting for our topic than ‘Wallpaper’: the magazine ‘Monocle’ contains reports written in the form of an international “briefing” from all around the world which enthusiastically look at such diverse topics as the Japanese navy, an Icelandic airline, pop culture in South Korea, or a new night train in Germany. The unifying element: ‘Monocle’ is a magazine for world travelers (even if only in their imaginations) whose interests go beyond the borders of their own country. And it is expert at providing practical tips for an elite which collects frequent flyer miles: Which hotel in Hong Kong has the best lobby? Why is the iris scanner at Heathrow Airport a magnificent invention for frequent travelers? What expansion strategy is Finnair pursuing? The topics all revolve around the topic of “working while on the go”, because the magazine quite decidedly does not address vacation travelers. For example, it passionately fights for wireless Internet reception on passenger planes: “Although we wish we could do our research and edit this magazine while sitting on a converted Korean 777 and using WLAN – this is unfortunately not the case,” notes the focal “Travel Top 50”. This is followed by brief lamentation over the regrettable discontinuation of the “ Connexion” Internet service on board Boeing planes, then rejoicing over the news that Panasonic is working on a solution to this problem and that Qantas will be one of the first airlines to make working online possible during a flight – as soon as it has its Airbus A380.
Perhaps only the German authors Christian Kracht and Eckardt Nickel write in a similarly cosmopolitan vein; their literary collection of reports “Holidays Forever” or articles such as “The Tailor of Bangkok” postulated the ideal of the global flâneur back in 1998. Making a quick stop for a gin and tonic at the Foreign Correspondents Club in the Thai metropolis appeared back then to be both sophisticated and unrealistic. But thanks to no-frills airlines and increasing professional mobility, things look different today.
You may well find all of this jaded, far removed from reality, or personally irrelevant. But the fact is that this idea of a consistently mobile lifestyle matches up beautifully with one consequence of the new technological developments: this global perspective of a way of life is suddenly well within reach for anyone who is no longer chained to a desk. Forget for a moment the long lines at the check-in counter, the delays, the pushing and shoving in the cabin. Ignore briefly the practical constraints that are guaranteed to make it completely impossible to ever really do something as crazy as this – doesn’t the promise of a little more international jet set and mobile lifestyle seem enormously more tempting than the monotony of your daily office routine? Taking a moment to dream has never hurt anyone. And it can have an enormously motivational effect. If you do not resolve to start spending a couple of days a month working under palm trees, you will certainly never do it.
In 2006, market researchers for the American Future Foundation conducted a study on behalf of the Japanese office equipment manufacturer Brother to examine the changes to be expected in the working world in the next few years and described the following scenario: “A significant trend is the fact that workers can log on, connect to networks, and download data from buses, hotels, bedrooms, and remote huts. The workers of tomorrow will be able to work anywhere, and many of us will do exactly that.” Our bodies will become our offices, say the researchers – so we will carry our workplaces around with us all the time. We will certainly continue to go to offices or have work areas at home. But the growth in teleworking will blur the borders between work and home and demand interesting new solutions to make room for both in our lives. People will be able to work in most residences, but new rules and strategies will be required so that the working members of the family actually have the peace and quiet they need to concentrate on and carry out their employment obligations.
People will be able to begin and stop work whenever they want, more and more private matters will be taken care of during the work day. Some will most likely work even more than today, especially ambitious workers who always want to be reachable. The offices themselves will change and increasingly become the sites of collaborative and social interaction rather than just being the places for work activities they were in the past.
Working from remote locations and the greater individual responsibility of every single employee will change the relationship between employees and employers in a seemingly paradoxical way. Certainly there will be greater emphasis on producing measurable results. But at the same time, progressive employers will recognize that trust and social networks are becoming more significant when dealing with their staff. The client for the study, Brother CEO Yuji Furukawa, sees it like this: “Companies must develop trust in their employees – in the freedom to develop a better balance between life and work.”
The basis for this more flexible and, according to researchers, “more fluid” way of working will be communication. More than ever before, we will spend a large part of our working day staying in contact with one another, cultivating relationships, establishing new connections. New technologies will enable us to do this in more and more complex and subtle ways. The most interesting point for the researchers was the presumed influence of this trend on our definition of work and private life. Work will become less and less a place where we go and more and more a question of how we use our time overall: “In 2020, we will no longer go to work” writes the Future Foundation in its report, “we will simply do our work.”
By this point, according to the optimistic prediction of the experts working with the author of the study, Paul Flatters, 81% of the working population in Germany will be working as flexible and mobile employees, as so-called “freE workers” – we call them new free employees. But we should not think of this as an inexorable, automatic process which we can sit back and simply wait for. From the employee’s point of view, it would be rewarding to actively call for this development today because before 2020 gets here, many will have had to spend a lot of time chained to desks. Employers must really become active proponents of this change because it is the only way for companies to profit from the advantages described above and to belong to the group of progressive first movers.