Rise of Nomad-ism

Description:

Wireless communications have ushered a new version of this very old idea. Nomadism is a trend that started out mainly within urban environments; augmented by the growing sophistication of mobile and network (including internet) technology, it has outgrown into a very real lifestyle and a paradigm shift hiding in plain sight. It is the permanent yet placeless connectivity to one's documents, family, professional and social network, market, entertainment etc. Nomadism implies immediacy, flexibility, facilitation and engagement, yet it does not necessarily imply migration or travel. A 'nomad' is as likely to be a teenager in Oslo, Tokyo or suburban America as a world roaming business executive. Technologically that is made feasible by wireless internet, notebooks, smart phone devices (such as Blackberry, Nokia N95 or the late iPhone), Wi-Fi hotspots, protocols such as IMAP etc.

The changes wrought by the networked environment are structural. The latter suggests that our society, media and communications are evolving from the straight road of an industrial era to the more complex and networked world that almost mimics nature. The new media environment does not necessarily revolve around content and distribution. It is more about people, connections and social networks.

This phenomenon has immense implications, reshaping work conditions, personal life, public behavior and social cohesion alike. In one sense, it transcends the late 90's 'cocooning' ebb, since most of the devices used nowadays are mobile, and network coverage is almost seamless. In work, relationships become more transactional and purpose driven, social serendipity is declining. From a sociological standpoint, it is interesting to figure out how mobile communications are changing interactions between people. Nomadism, many argue, 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.

Anthropologists and psychologists are investigating whether and how mobile and virtual interaction augments or challenges physical and offline chemistry, and whether it makes young people in particular more autonomous or more dependent. Architects, property developers and urban planners are changing their concepts about buildings and cities to accommodate the new habits of the 'nomads' that dwell in them. Activists are trying to take advantage of the ubiquity of mobile technology to manifest their causes, even as they worry about the same tools in the hands of the malicious. Linguists are arguing how mobile communication changes language itself, and thus thought.

Enablers:

1. Evolving wireless technologies [1], [2] , [3], more cell phones than fixed landlines

2. Extensive, versatile mobile phone use [4]

3. Increasing mobility [5], [6]

4. Digital savvy younger generation, increasingly involved older generations [7]

5. Importance of individual status, family ties, and community

6. More demanding and volatile professional environment

7. Media globalization [8]

8. 'Intelligent Urbanism' [9]

9. More sophisticated while dependable and less confusing mobile devices [10]

10. Segmentation [11]

11. Increasing awareness of social problems and inequalities, growth of mobile activism [12]

12. Modified architecture of urban spaces, accommodating and further enabling this mobile technology-induced lifestyle [13]

13. Postmodernist approach to technology, society and interpersonal relations [14]

14. Mobile advertising [15]

15. Culture [16]

16. Fashion over functionality [17], [18], [19]

Inhibitors:

1. Limited connectivity in rural areas

2. Mobile device limitations [20]

3. Diffusion of work into personal and family life - margins between 'home' and 'office' are unclear [21]

4. Weakening social ties outside family-friend-colleague network [22]

5. Affordability of high-end devices, such able to yield more advanced services (such as mobile TV)

6. Fear of eavesdropping, surveillance or unauthorized access by third parties [23], [24]

7. Health risk posed by extensive use of mobile handsets [25], [26]

8. Not all workers can thrive in such a culture; Some people are dubious, or difficult to manage without face-to-face communication

9. More stress, less privacy; mobility implies greater autonomy, but anybody can be reached anywhere [27]

10. Online communication is more ambiguous than offline. Expressions or body language cannot be successfully emulated

11. Older generations can be either ignorant or mistrustful towards this new technology [28]

Paradigms:

1. Cumulatively, all of the technological changes amount to a historic merger, at long last, of two technologies that have already proved revolutionary in their own right. The mobile phone has changed the world by becoming ubiquitous in rich and poor countries alike. The internet has mostly touched rich countries, and rich people in poor countries, but has already changed the way people shop, bank, listen to music, read news and socialise. Now the mobile phone is on course to replace the PC as the primary device for getting online. [29]

2. Through mobile phones one can capture the social context of their consumption. Contrast to the PC, once someone acquires eg. a new game or ringtone, he/she is inclined to inform their friends/colleagues, and share or even influence them into a decision. Once companies learn how to capitalize on that, ramifications will be massive. [30]

3. The workspace is going to be redefined, such as the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. There will be more “on-demand spaces” and “drop-in centres”, with flexible layouts that facilitate collaboration, that accomodate permanent (wi-fi) connectivity thus casting the traditional offices and cubicles obsolete. Also, some airlines now provide in flight mobile services. [31]

4. The idea of an intelligent system made of phones bearing sensors that automatically detect and report problems, without their owner's intervention, is now feasible. In the event of a nuclear leak or a “dirty bomb”, the sensors of large numbers of phones, all identifying their location through the global-positioning system (GPS), would point authorities to the source of the radiation. [32]

Timing:

• 1960s and 70s: Herbert Marshall McLuhan, the most influential media and communications theorist ever, pictured nomads zipping around at great speed, using facilities on the road and all but dispensing with their homes.

• 1980s: Jacques Attali, a French economist who was advising president François Mitterrand at the time, used the term to predict an age when rich and uprooted elites would jet around the world in search of fun and opportunity, and poor but equally uprooted workers would migrate in search of a living. APPLE first introduces the graphical user interface

• In 1986 IMAP is designed by Mark Crispin in 1986 as a remote mailbox protocol, in contrast to the widely used POP, a protocol for retrieving the contents of a mailbox

• 1990s: Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners jointly wrote the first book with “digital nomad” in the title, adding the bewildering possibilities of the latest gadgets to the vision.

• In 1999 a Canadian firm, Research In Motion (RIM), introduced the Blackberry, making e-mail on the go seem normal

• Until 2003 WI-FI hotspots have started mushrooming throughout America, Western Europe, Korea and Japan

• In 2007 Apple releases the iPhone, changing the consumer world's perception on cellular devices. Google, for instance, has received 50 times more web-search requests from iPhones this year than from any other mobile handset. Five out of ten bestselling novels in Japan are written on mobile phones

Additional Web Resources:

• http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10950394
• http://communities_dominate.blogs.com/brands/mobile/index.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol
• http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10950378
• http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10950463