Nomads at last | Economist.com

08 Feb 09

gitsul .

13 Aug 08

Linda Nitsche

Articles from the Economist.com that highlight the way wireless access is changing the way we live.

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12 Aug 08

Joquetta Johnson

article

Technology

14 Jul 08

Gosia Stergios

Permanent connectivity due to better WIFI networks, better mobile devices (e.g. iPhone) are becoming ubiquitous in rich and poor countries, access to Internet via Mobile is taking over the previously preferred PC...

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30 May 08

Martin Dower

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28 May 08

Carmen Clark

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Bret Alison

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16 May 08

David Wayne

Wireless communication is changing the way people work, live, love and relate to placesâ??and each other, says Andreas Kluth (interviewed here)

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15 May 08

Yule Heibel

Published on the same date as "The new oases" (http://tinyurl.com/6nhzvy), I missed this story the first time around. Saw it now via Wendy Waters's blog, "All About Cities." Like "The new oases," it's all about mobile computing, and its effects on our social worlds/ lived lives.

It's odd this topic should pop up for me today, as the other article (bookmarked last month, "The new oases") seemed very appropriate to a discussion around video commenting, which was taking place on Fred Wilson's blog. Disqus & Seesmic have joined forces, enabling users to leave video recorded comments (vs. text scribblings) on blogs. Somehow, when I read about this on Dave Winer's blog and Wilson's (and I left a comment on Wilson's blog, too, albeit straight text, no video), I immediately thought of "The new oases" and its points regarding isolation. You have to wonder whether the technology can ever *produce* or *recreate* "nest warmth," that sense of communal belonging, or whether each instance of technologicall mediation isn't just another way of giving us yet another perspective view on our own selves.

It's not the case that "communal belonging" or what the Germans call "Nestwaerme" (nest warmth) is a good thing, or whether getting a perspective is a good thing. They're both good things in their appropriate times and places. It's more a question of not confusing one for the other. On Wilson's blog there's much discussion of whether or not the Disqus-Seesmic joint venture (video blog comments) will produce better comments/ comments streams/ understanding. I don't think it will. It will just refract whatever understanding exists or is able to be seen into yet more facets. That's all.

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AT THE Nomad Café in Oakland, California, Tia Katrina Canlas, a law student at the nearby university in Berkeley, places her double Americano next to her mobile phone and iPod, opens her MacBook laptop computer and logs on to the café's wireless internet connection to study for her class on the legal treatment of sexual orientation. She is a regular here but doesn't usually bring cash, so her credit-card statement reads “Nomad, Nomad, Nomad, Nomad”. That says it all, she thinks. Permanently connected, she communicates by text, photo, video or voice throughout the day with her friends and family, and does her “work stuff” at the same time. She roams around town, but often alights at oases that cater to nomads.
The proper metaphor for somebody who carries portable but unwieldy and cumbersome infrastructure is that of an astronaut rather than a nomad, says Paul Saffo, a trend-watcher in Silicon Valley. Astronauts must bring what they need, including oxygen, because they cannot rely on their environment to provide it. They are both defined and limited by their gear and supplies.
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- Around the turn of the century, as some astronauts, typically executive road warriors, got smarter about packing light, says Mr Saffo, they graduated to an intermediate stage, becoming hermit crabs. These are crustaceans that survive by dragging around a cast-off mollusc shell for protection and shelter. In the metaphorical sense, the shell might be a “carry-on” bag on wheels, stuffed full of cables, discs, dongles, batteries, plugs and paper documents (just in case of disc failure). These hermit crabs strike fear into the hearts of seated airline passengers whenever they board, because their shells invariably bang into innocent shins all the way to their seat. They carry less than astronauts—and are thus more mobile—but are still quite heavily laden with gear, mostly as a safeguard against disasters.
- Urban nomads have started appearing only in the past few years. Like their antecedents in the desert, they are defined not by what they carry but by what they leave behind, knowing that the environment will provide it. Thus, Bedouins do not carry their own water, because they know where the oases are. Modern nomads carry almost no paper because they access their documents on their laptop computers, mobile phones or online. Increasingly, they don't even bring laptops. Many engineers at Google, the leading internet company and a magnet for nomads, travel with only a BlackBerry, iPhone or other “smart phone”. If ever the need arises for a large keyboard and some earnest typing, they sit down in front of the nearest available computer anywhere in the world, open its web browser and access all their documents online.
- Another big misunderstanding of previous decades was to confuse nomadism with migration or travel.
- how far he moves is completely irrelevant. Even if an urban nomad confines himself to a small perimeter, he nonetheless has a new and surprisingly different relationship to time, to place and to other people. “Permanent connectivity, not motion, is the critical thing,” says Manuel Castells, a sociologist at the Annenberg School for Communication, a part of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
- Nomadism, most believe, tends to bring people who are already close, such as family members, even closer. But it may do so at the expense of their attentiveness towards strangers encountered physically (rather than virtually) in daily life. That has implications for society at large.
- Architects, property developers and urban planners are changing their thinking about buildings and cities to accommodate the new habits of the nomads that dwell in them.
  - Yule Heibel on 2008-05-15
    
    Yep.
- Regulators have grasped that the airwaves are now among society's most important assets. America, for instance, has just auctioned off a chunk of spectrum with new rules that require the owner to allow any kind of device and software to run on the resulting network.
- Now the mobile phone is on course to replace the PC as the primary device for getting online.
  - Yule Heibel on 2008-05-15
    
    Pay attention, Canada!
- The most wonderful thing about mobile technology today is that consumers can increasingly forget about how it works and simply take advantage of it. As Ms Canlas sips her Americano and dives into her e-mail in-box at the Nomad Café, she gives no thought to the specifications and standards that make her connection possible. It is the human connections that now take over.

28 Apr 08

Shanta Rohse

The modern nomad has a new relationship to relationship to time, place and other people. Manuel Castells: "Permanent connectivity, not motion, is the critical thing."

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16 Apr 08

Cassandra Disque

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12 Apr 08

Susan Brooks-Young

An appropriate quote from Castells sums it up nicely: "Permanent connectivity, not motion, is the critical thing". I spend more time most days interacting with people in other countries than with people down the hallway. And I suspect the ability for people to interact outside of geographical constraints will replace much of what it means to "be here". Several times this week, I've approached people standing at counters, under the assumption they were there to provide a service for me, only to discover that they were in rather animated conversations with someone on their phone (go Bluetooth). "Here" means less and less. “Connected” means more and more.

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