Digital nomadism, digital mobility, and writing

New ways of inhabiting the world

There’s a word that I’ve been wanting to explore for a while. This word is : {mobility}. The other day, a friend of mine, [Gwen Catalá->https://twitter.com/GwenCatala], used it to describe [{Explosent les villes d’Asie}->http://www.mahigan.ca/spip.php?article477], a series of texts questioning our megapolitan urbanity for which I travelled to eight Asian megacities last year. The word, in this context, seemed quite appropriate to me.

Gwen isn't exactly a sedentary kind of person himself. He travels continually between France and Chiang Mai. As a web designer and cross media publisher (along with Roxane Lecomte, he took over [publie.net->publie.net] from François Bon at the beginning of this year), he can work from any place in the world. All he needs is a computer and an Internet connection. He chooses to do most of his work from Chiang Mai, Thailand. He is what has been called a digital nomad.

Chiang Mai is a huge hub, brimming with digital nomads, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s a friendly, calm and very affordable city surrounded by beautiful mountains. Since the cost of living here is very low, it allows freelancers and free spirits to escape from the overworking western lifestyle. Living in Chiang Mai, one can do less potboilers work and focus on more creative, often unprofitable projects.

I’ve become a bit of a digital nomad myself, having lived and travelled in Asia for the last two years. I was lucky enough to get writing grants from the Canadian government, but this endowment wouldn’t have got me very far in a western country with a high cost of living. In Southeast Asia, however, it’s another story. I’ve now decided to go back to university to get a master’s degree in conference interpreting. During year one, all courses will be given entirely online, so I’m free to stay nomadic during that time. I’ve been doing some research about digital hubs around the world. Countries like Spain, Portugal, Colombia and Ecuador are currently very popular with remote workers, but it goes without saying that the map of digital nomadism is being continuously redrawn by economic, political, urban and social changes. Apart from having a low cost of living and good weather, the ideal digital nomad hub must be fairly safe. Medellin, Colombia, for instance, only became a valued destination after the drug cartels started withdrawing from the city, and now that the crime rate is showing new signs of increase, remote workers may well choose to take their laptops somewhere else. As for me, I’ll probably end up in Cuenca, Ecuador, a city that seems quite similar to Chiang Mai in many ways, the main difference being that it’s a Spanish-speaking country, which is a language that intend to learn during the next year or so.

Another thing to consider before moving to a new location is the quality of the Internet connection. Problem is, Internet speed and reliability are primarily economical issues. There’s a huge difference between the average download speed in South Korea — 52.4 Mbps — and the one in Bolivia — 2.1 Mbps. This difference manifests itself in the digital world as global, social and economical inequality. We’re hearing a lot about the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) these days, sometimes as an example of the democratization of education in the digital age. But I doubt it’s even possible to pursue online studies from Sucre, Lima, or the Philippines. It certainly isn’t possible from the Congo, where the average download speed is 1.1 Mbps… For digital nomads, poor Internet speed isn’t always a problem, though. Translators and proof-readers can probably live with a bad connection — although it might slow them down a bit in their research —, but web-designers will find it harder to put up with low speeds. In certain situations, a reliable high-speed connection is mandatory. For example, if you want to teach online using Skype, Google Hangout, or any of the likes. It’s going to be indispensable to me as well, as I will be studying online using Adobe Connect, which requires a large bandwidth. I’ve done a lot of research and I should be able to get a sufficiently good connection in Thailand (for the fall term) and then in Ecuador (for the winter and summer terms), but I must admit that I’m still a little anxious about it. I’m trying to find the perfect balance between the "lows" (low cost of living = low Internet speed) and the "highs" (high cost of living = high Internet speed).

Digital nomadism hence represents a new social and geographical phenomena that is changing the way people inhabit the world. It casts doubt on the traditional idea of a stable and fixed "home". It’s not just about moving periodically from one place to another. When a digital nomad travels to another location, he usually doesn’t bring a lot of stuff with him. Not so many clothes or objects, and certainly no furniture. When he uses a place as his (temporary) base, he will buy a few things, of course, but he won’t accumulate too many. He’ll think twice before buying something big, expensive or difficult to resell, knowing that he may move again the next month or the next year. When I studied in France for my doctorate (2006-2009), I had to carry tons of books every time I’d travel to or from Montreal. With digital books becoming increasingly available, this is no longer the case. For the last two years, I’ve been reading almost exclusively on my iPad. When a book is not available in digital format, then I order it from Amazon.fr. In two years in Chiang Mai, I’ve only accumulated a dozen of paper books or so. Other possessions include a scooter, which I will sell back when I leave Chiang Mai, and a compact espresso coffee machine (because I’m addicted to good coffee!). I wish the world were better adapted to digital nomadism. You know it isn’t when you have to provide an electricity bill for some paperwork or when you struggle to find a good Internet connection. But it’s changing slowly. In Chiang Mai, for instance, there’s a very innovative place called Pun Space. It’s a nice co-working environnement, with well-illuminated spaces, high-speed Internet, and coffee. Perfect place for nomads who don’t want to have to set-up an office in the apartment in which they’re only going to stay for a short period of time. There’s also my favorite, The Camp, a library-like coffee shop on the top floor of a new shopping mall in Chiang Mai, the Maya. Anyway, I dream of a world with cities made of many, if not only, temporary inhabitable spaces — sleeping rooms, working spaces, even kitchens, etc. — available for short-term renting. Cities entirely designed for digital nomadism.

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Now, what difference is there, if any, between nomadism and mobility? Both concepts are very similar. Except that, in my opinion, nomadism is a way to inhabit the world, while mobility is a way to inhabit the city. Nomadism implies moving from one territory to another, while one can be mobile in a single territory. Nomads move from here to there, mobile-people move from here to here…

When I shift from one country to another, I’m a nomad. If I move from Thailand to Ecuador, I’ll cross into a different territory, a different culture. Language, food, weather and many other things will change. This is nomadism. I will move into what we call in French : {l’ailleurs}. That is, {the elsewhere}. Nowadays, we are all familiar with these concepts : deterritorialization, nomadism, cross-culturalism and so forth, all of which, admittedly, I’m not very interested by. I just feel there is something new, in the present world, that requires new concepts and perhaps new narratives. Mobility might well be one of these concepts.

If you commute in a city, there is no {ailleurs}, no nomadism. If you take the train, the bus or even the plane from one city to another inside the same country, there is no real culture-crossing, no deterritorialization. I would even go one step further and suggest that travelling from, say, Bangkok to London or from Jakarta to Buenos Aires doesn’t have to be considered as nomadism. {The capitals have all the same become} : those lyrics are from French singer Alain Bashung. It means that, beyond cultural differences, cities have all somehow become the same. Hence, when we travel from one (major) city to another, we travel from here to here, from same to same. One can of course focus on cultural differences, but these differences don’t belong to the city. They belong to the country. And we all know how they fade in any major city, while remaining quite decisive in less urbanized areas.

That brings us back to [{Explosent les villes d’Asie}->http://www.mahigan.ca/spip.php?article477]. For this project, I went to five countries : the Philippines, Indonesia, China, India and Thailand. But I fact, except for Thailand, I can’t say that I know any of these countries. During my explorations, I travelled almost exclusively to cities. I can't say that I know the Philippines or Indonesia, all I can say is that I explored Manila and Jakarta a lot. In China, I travelled by plane from Beijing to Shanghai. In India, I travelled by night train from Kolkata to Delhi and by plane from Delhi to Mumbai. During these trips, I saw nothing but cities. Megacities.

Of course, Manila is part of the Philippines. One could focus on the presence of the filipino culture in Manila. That’s not what I did. It’s a question of perspective. You can either focus on national and cultural aspects of a city or concentrate on it’s international and megalopolitan dimension. Manila doesn’t appeal to me because of its Asian-Pacific background or its Spanish or American colonial print. What fascinates me about Manila is its present development into a disproportionate standardized contemporary city. In this matter, Manila isn’t any different from other megacities. It’s just not about {difference} anymore. Travelling from Manila to Jakarta or from Shanghai to Kolkata, I was travelling from same to same. The only difference being the time : Manila shows an early stage of the contemporary megacity, while Beijing reveals a much advanced phase.

Anyway, for me, these trips were not real nomadism. It was like travelling to a single city. Always disproportionate. Always the same. That’s exactly what I mean by the concept of mobility. A movement from here to here. A form of commuting, but shifted to a global scale.

Everybody experience mobility on a daily basis. You don’t have to be a nomad to be a mobile-person. When you take the metro, the skytrain or the bus in a city that has become standardized, you are experiencing mobility. Mobility is indistinctly local {and} international, but is never national. It’s local, because it’s here, it’s banal, it’s alien to any exoticism or nomadism (which are two different things, I know). It’s international, because this {localism} is repeated everywhere in the world. Therefore, taking the plane from Bangkok to Beijing is no longer an experience totally different from commuting by skytrain inside Bangkok. In both cases, we’re going from here to here, from same to same.

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Is there a digital mobility just like there is a digital nomadism? Of course. Today, the word "mobile" is being used to describe everything related to small electronic devices like smart phones and tablets. In my mind, digital nomadism is synonymous with laptops, while digital mobility is synonymous with phones and tablets (for now, at least : perhaps Google Glass or something else will come and change that...). When we travel from one country to another, we take our laptop with us. When we travel inside a city, we don’t always carry our laptop, but we almost always carry our phone and often our tablet. On the train, the bus or the plane, we use our phones and our tablets.

When I travelled for {Explosent les villes d’Asie}, I took only my iPhone and my iPad with me. Along with my iPad I used a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard, which also served as a case. Everywhere I’d go, I’d take my phone and my tablet with me. With my phone, I’d capture photos, sounds and videos. Then I’d stop in a coffee shop or I’d go back to my hotel room to blog. I’d upload the media files into my Dropbox or directly to Youtube or Audioboo. I’d modify the pictures using mobile apps. I’d type the text on my Logitech keyboard. I was able to do everything with these very light, polyvalent and portable devices.

I’m not particularly enthusiastic about the devices themselves. I’m more interested in how they might change the way we write. If I had travelled into Asian megacities before the digital age, perhaps I would have taken pictures, but surely no videos or sound recordings. I could have written in the cities, on a daily basis, but initially, I wouldn’t have mixed my writing with other kinds of media. Also, I wouldn’t have published my texts immediately. That would have left me free to rewrite as much as I wanted to before even publishing anything. The act of publishing everyday on my blog forced me to accept what I had written the day before. I had to deal with it. I had to see everyday as a new one, and at the same time, I had to build my series on that very concept of immediacy.

Digital nomadism is a new version of something that we already know, i.e. nomadism itself. Mobility, on the other hand, appears to me as something entirely new. Something that may well spawn fresh forms of narratives.