Dr. Zia Ahmed<\/p>\n
A modern digital nomad is an attempt to avoid settled and restricted life and feel independence from family life<\/p>\n
Gipsies and nomads have been of particular interest for many since the beginning of settled life. The same has been a source of interesting fictional narratives in the world of literature as well. Mathew Arnold composed the poem \u2018Scholar Gypsy\u2019 to commemorate the life of gipsies and their role in teaching arts and magic to the protagonist of the poem. The same was the case with the protagonist \u2018Maggie\u2019 in George Eliot\u2019s novel \u2018Mill on the Floss\u2019 wherein Maggie as a child wished to become a Gypsy queen and for this, she did run away from the gipsies. Nathanial Hawthorne also employed gipsy art and life to give camouflage to the absence and change in the life of Chillingworth in his novel \u2018The Scarlet Letter\u2019. And recently, Uzma Aslam Khan referred to Pakistani nomads roaming in Northern areas of Pakistan in her novel \u2018Thinner than Skin\u2019.
\nOther than literary narratives, gipsies have been of particular interest as well because of their nomadic way of life full of myths about them. For example, it has been believed that gipsy women are amazingly beautiful and strongly well built. Another myth has also been about their mysterious arts and magic potions. Another kind of gipsies is known to be Arab Nomads who inhabit the Arabian Sandy deserts and lived and thrived on the raising of herds of animals. The Arab Nomads have been termed by some European scholars also as warriors and upholders of their values and way of life. In Pakistan also these Nomads exist not only in the deserts but also in mountainous areas as well where they graze their herds on the hills during the summer and come down to valleys in winter and have the same supposititious as well as mysterious way of life.
\nThe main difference in settled and Nomadic life is the freedom and independence from the regular socio-political life of the settled life in cities, towns and villages. The same spirit has come down the lane and has given birth to the concept of \u2018Digital Nomads\u2019 who are largely equipped with all modern gadgetry of digital devices and live at beeches and resorts to not only work there but also enjoy the freedom from the city life. They mostly depend on laptops or their smartphones and stable and powerful Wi-Fi Internet connectivity. The concept is more popular among the millennial youth mainly engaged in online work. A modern digital nomad is an attempt to avoid settled and restricted life and feel independence from family life.
\nThe concept was introduced by Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners in their book \u2018Digital Nomad\u2019 in 1997 in which they visualized the invention of a single powerful device of communication that would afford the opportunity to almost all employees to work from anywhere without actually confining themselves or travelling towards their workplaces. A digital nomad, therefore, is one employee (or self-employed) who can sit and work in any caf\u00e9 or hotel room or beeches without going to their offices. This concept gained ground because of Coronavirus lockdowns when almost all employers, especially digital employers, needed their employees to stay at home and keep doing work online. Online education, which allowed the students and teachers to sit anywhere and inter-communicate for teaching and learning purposes supported this ideology. Similarly, online shopping also made it unnecessary to visit shopping plazas for purchases that could be delivered home.
\n21st-century skilled workers began to make it a point that they would not stay at home and would keep doing their work online while simultaneously enjoying their life on beaches and pleasure resorts. The same became even more attractive because of the community dwellings and shared accommodations making their stay cheaper and more enjoyable. Every digital nomad found a new chance of meeting, sharing and living among other digital nomads and hence making new friendships and even relationships.
\nIt may sound appealing but it is not without its downside. For continuous working conditions, one needs a powerful laptop and internet connection which is not stably available all around. So, it limits and confines people to certain specific geographical locations. Secondly, digital nomads live for months and months away from their regular families which may cause ruptures in their personal life bonds. Thirdly, the friendships made by digital nomads are temporary and transitory in nature and may cause emotional upheavals for them. Fourthly, it is practicable only for the type of online work.
\nBut then every mode of life has its own pros and cons and the same is the case with digital nomadism. If it has given freedom and independence of work to the youth of the 21st century and has afforded an opportunity for self-employment more than ever, it has also created new complications of social and work life. Digital Nomadism may be taken as a new mode of life invented by human beings with their intelligence and dexterity to make their existence even more productive and innovative with new survival techniques, especially by reducing work boredom.<\/p>\n
The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson College, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr. Zia Ahmed A modern digital nomad is an attempt to avoid settled and restricted life and feel independence from family life Gipsies and nomads have been of particular interest for many since the beginning of settled life. The same has been a source of interesting fictional narratives in the world of literature as well. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[5552,1256],"class_list":{"0":"post-252477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-article","7":"tag-digital-nomadism","8":"tag-dr-zia-ahmed"},"yoast_head":"\n