The DNM

Why the Nomad?

You can't claim us. We live here. ―Eddie Izzard

I remember one sunny day, that there was a New York public radio interview with the Ugandan author, Mahmood Mamdani. The author was discussing a new book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War onTerror, a follow up to his best-selling, Good Muslim, BadMuslim. In the discussion with the interviewer, Mamdani was attempting to transmit ideas regarding global events from his academic and insider perspectives.

The interviewer kept circling the problems, sounding to me, like he was on cultural auto-pilot. Agitated, I called in and I asked the author about the role of the nomads in these geopolitical situations. He paused, then he confirmed that yes, the role of the traditional nomad was under great threat, and understanding that threat was a key to understanding some of the root tensions in the Middle East and Africa. He quickly touched on oil and other concerns that forced stricter border controls, and encroached on traditionally open lands. He touched on the impoverishment of nomads forced into rigid nation-state borders and dictates.

I began to consider the nomad in a whole new way, let my anger towards this loss of diversity, fuel a curiosity toward identifying renewal. The very concept of nomadism, was powerful, and I considered how from the ashes of all death, comes something new. I was living in Brooklyn,right across the East river, from the financial district which I saw shining as I drank from my first world coffee cup.

Past the bridge, and boats I could see, tiny, old roads were perpetually winding their way up to Wall Street. Reported on the radio news that day, and all over the webs, was news from those streets, just across the river. That dismal financial wave, was coming for me, and within no time my comfort zone was gone.

The financial collapse of 2008 was a fiercely enduring restructuring. It was a devastating shockwave, taking upward mobility and daily stability out from underneath me and so many others. Digital pictures, media monopolies and the changing nature of publishing had already thrown some wrenches into my photography career plans, and now, my stable back up world, was also evaporating. I could see the death, I could feel the scramble to re-align and adjust, so as not to die.

At that same time, the term "digital nomad" was popping up on business pages and in the context of lifestyle trends. Anyone with wanderlust and a command of blogging could become a new type of nomad. The digital nomad at that point seemed like an inspiring, aspirational lifestyle, a romantic way to live and work, and that appealed to me. I got a mini computer, the type known as a smart phone, and was learning from my own nomad friends, who had grown up coding. I listened and learned from those who were navigating economies via online social engagement.

I began to see my online life as part of my survival, that to be nimble I had to have the appropriate gear and the correct attitude towards change. I had been a slow adopter of most technologies, but as I realized they could help me with everything from income to maintaining community, I became more interested in understanding if not always riding that edge.

The digital nomads I knew continued along, and in no time they were labeled digital gurus.They self-published books and were tapped for television sound bites.Their impact, their financial freedom, and their fan bases grew. I saw the comments and read their posts on yoga and finding balance with their offline lives, and wondered about their audience. They were celebrities for people attuned to minimal lifestyles and maximum joy, and it was a kind of utopia. Then, one day, I noticed these friends were disappearing online. Eventually, I couldn't find them at all, until I caught up with them, randomly, one day, hundreds of miles away from where we knew each other in Brooklyn.

These leading edge nomads, with their idealistic tactics for realizing joy through emotionally balanced but politically unfettered engagement with technology, had turned a corner. Everything had been going well,until they reached a point where they were somewhat inadvertently poking holes in the web of centralized currencies. They were lovingBitcoin and using it to buy coffee and pay for rooms in Europe. They were spreading the word, giving tips and tricks on how fantastic the future was going to be for all of us. Initially, everything in the minimalist utopia was fine, but clearly now, we were all sleeping on couches. Things were not so rosy.

Talking about cryptocurrencies and radical, at will citizenship, their carefree minimalist lives went from jet set, to international underground within weeks. Into deep space they plummeted along with their confidence in the benign nature of the status quo. They weren't formally wanted by anyone, but they said they felt a suppression of both their content and their platforms. Suddenly nobody wanted them for articles or sound bites. Little tiny bits of legislation hardly discussed anywhere were pushing them into a corner, profoundly changing their lives and the lives of other techno-human leaders.

These leading nomads went back to coding for hire, and went somewhere deep into web space and geographic exile. They remained nomadic, more so than ever in fact, but from now on, no one in the business pages would be there to report it. They left the increasingly compromised world of mass social media accounts behind and moved solidly into encrypted,private communications. It wasn't cloak and dagger, it was smarter and safer. Suddenly, like hackers a generation or two before them,these leading-edge nomads seemed to have something in common with the old, analogue nomad: a tense relationship with fixed boundaries and those who control them.