Techno Bedouins

This week the Economist ran an interesting special report on mobility. When I first downloaded the podcast and saw the title "Mobility" I thought this was about social mobility or perhaps even physical mobility (obesity epidemic crimps range of human motion?). The article actually focuses on the impact of pervasive connectivity on topics as diverse as work, architecture, language, activism, and social interaction.

The phrase "digital nomad" was repeatedly used in the article and one variation, "techno Bedouin," struck a chord with me. I was reminded of a friend who spent a season doing archeological work in Petra and lived in a Bedouin village during that time. You may be thinking "Bedouins? In villages? Contradiction!" But the Bedouins in that area were given homes by the government and forced to settle. One unexpected problem with this forced settlement was garbage. The society previously traveled to consume natural supplies where they were produced and disposed of their rubbish as they moved. With settlement, suddenly food needed more packing to be brought to them and the traditional trash disposal resulted in piles of garbage.

So what does this have to do with techno Bedouins? It's a reminder to ask what is the "trash" that no one considers when we switch from a settled to technomadic existence. I think The Economist actually touched on one of the problems: constant connectivity has placed a premium on speed of response over quality. We start spending so much time consuming and acknowledging information that no time is spent to ponder broader trends or think critically about the data we see.

I find the constant connectivity to be maddening at times but there is a silver lining. I suspect there’s a positive impact on the subject that I originally thought this report covered: social mobility. As opposed to one or two decades ago when only a subset of society could be constantly connected (think early cell phones or PDAs), now everyone has access to mobile technology, even in the developing world. More importantly, the real value of information is now about interpretation rather than access. And unlike access to data, interpretation only requires brainpower which is quite an equitably distributed resource.