One of the earliest known uses of the term digital nomad was in the 1997 book Digital Nomad by Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners, which describes how technology allows societies to return to a nomadic lifestyle.

I used to be a digital nomad, one of the early ones. When I started backpacking in the early 90s, I hadn’t heard of the internet or the brand-new www. My first experience as a digital nomad was with a dial-up modem and a BBS. I was going on an interrail trip to Britain and Ireland, looking for a way to get from Scotland to Ireland by train and ferry. I was never a travel guide or planner, so I usually picked up maps, hotel flyers, and tourist brochures at the local railway station in a truly nomadic fashion upon arrival. As I couldn’t find any information about the ferry link, I decided to post a question on one of my BBS forums. That was in the evening when I woke up the following day; the answer was already there. It seems like a long time since one grew up with Google (which, of course, didn’t exist at the time). However, to me, it was a revelation. It was like I had seen the future.

Moreover, I was pretty sure I could trust the person who gave me the information. The word “troll” hadn’t even been invented yet (at least not in the sense it is used nowadays). No, cyberspace was a pretty safe place with people who loved sharing information (they might not always have been the friendliest of people, but they tended to be very helpful and honest, sometimes a bit like people on the spectrum).

That was the day that my life as a digital nomad began. Some years later, in 95, I was a regular computer lab user at the University of Florence. The location was great, with a view over the river Arno, but the internet connection was slow. Then internet cafes sprang up, and I visited dozens and dozens of them, from Moscow to Lisbon. At first, they were pretty pricey, but as internet-enabled phones became common, they also became cheap, and when the era of smartphones arrived, they became a real rarity. The last time I have been to one was in Siberia in 2005, as there were no radio signals apart from the cybercafe operated via satellite.

If you were a digital nomad, chances were you were also a pioneer, always the first among your friends to use a new digital device or service. Few people understood my excitement when I got my first Google Nexus phone with Google Maps installed. Few people saw all the possibilities, so I couldn’t resist making a short YouTube video 10 years ago:

It turned out that free information wasn’t the only perk of being a digital nomad. Meeting people of your tribe was an even bigger one. There were always some great people among those I met on my trips. It was like digital nomads attracted each other like magnets. And we do. We are high in a personality trait called “openness to experience.” This personality trait makes sure we are interested in

Foreign cultures (for many, the further, the more interesting)

Technology that helps us quench our thirst for knowledge

People who are open to diversity

This trait ensured that the people we get to know in our nomadic enterprises are very much like ourselves. I have argued that such people have more ancient hunter-gatherer traits vs people with more ancient farmer traits: highly conscientious, hard-working, but not very curious, and sometimes even xenophobe. The evolutionary reason hunter-gatherer types (N/iNtuitive in Myers-Briggs) are likely to become digital nomads is their “survival pattern.” Foragers have a split and merge system, in which they split from their band when resources become scarce or the band becomes too big, and conflict arises and then merge with other bands.

This is precisely the pattern we see in digital nomads. It has always been easier for me to make friends abroad than at home because the people interested in me abroad tend to belong to my tribe. We forager types may have many reasons for becoming nomadic: there is this “wanderlust” in us (and I am pretty sure most forager types have the DRD4-7R gene variant, which is called wanderlust genes). The next level would be being bored with the farmer's routine and longing for change, and the final level would be total despair with life and society and the need for splitting. From the Buddha to millionaires who leave everything behind to start from scratch, such people have always been hunter-gatherer type people.

Sometimes, we meet our fellow foragers only once; sometimes, our paths cross frequently, and sometimes, we become a community. The last is rare because of modern circumstances and because we get used to “walking alone.” The best way to meet fellow foragers is to take the less traveled path (Robert Frost was undoubtedly a forager type). In the late 90s, I joined international language classes in Romania. Almost all the people there were forager types. There was the occasional pastoralist type, looking for adventure, but mostly, we were one big family. It didn’t matter if you were from the US, Russia, France, or Japan; we got along like a house on fire. There was an INFP, like me, who I would later see again in Florence, London, and Dublin. Little did I know she was an INFP then, but when I came across MBTI and she sent me her result, I wasn’t surprised anymore that we found it so easy to get along; we were born tuned to the same wavelength.

My digital nomadism ended when we started having children. Settling down isn’t accessible for forager types as it brings along the farmer kind of lifestyle we don’t enjoy much. We feel there is less light in our lives. Some of us will never put up with settling down for good. Most of us do. I miss traveling sometimes, but my children compensate me more than enough for the joy I miss out on. II miss not traveling per se, but I miss the wonderful people I met along the way.

Through my writings, I have recently gotten to know many more digital nomads: the British guy who lives in Japan and the American girl who moved to many places before settling in Australia. A few days ago, one woman told me that she had moved to China, where everyone was intuitive, and had finally found her tribe there. So many forager-type people have their own Eat Pray Love stories to tell. Like Elisabeth Gilbert, most of them are ENTPs or ENFPs. I want to dedicate the following song to them and all the people I met and who live scattered around the world now. The song is by Italian singer Alice (INFP), titled “Nomadi” and from her album “Viaggiatrice solitary” (lonely female traveler):