Becoming a Digital Nomad: Your Step by Step Guide to the Digital Nomad Lifestyle by Chris Backe

Intro
In a way, we have a rocket scientist to thank for digital nomads.
In 1972, former NASA engineer Jack Nilles was permitted to work from home
on a complex NASA communication system. People asked how he could be
working when he was at home, and his response, telecommuting, became a wellknown term. He soon began to research telecommuting and teleworking at the
University of Southern California, and was the lead author of the seminal book,
The Telecommunications - Transportation Tradeoff. Telecommuting was an
'alternative to transportation,' it proposed, and since it would reduce the number
of commuters, it could solve issues like gridlock, long commutes to work, and
potentially helping the national energy crisis the US was experiencing at the
time. While the internet and the personal computer as we know them didn't yet
exist, the authors predicted new technologies would emerge that would be as
revolutionary to life as the automobile.

The freedom finder
This is Jane. Jane left school at 16 and got married at 20. Work, a family
and ‘normal’ life followed but after 25 years she ran away from her
marriage. Needing time away after a long drawn out divorce process, she
resigned from her job and set off for Peru. Initially planning to be away for
7 months, she quickly realised that she never wanted to lose the sense of
freedom that she was finally experiencing. Jane discovered that she was
also inspiring others to believe in themselves again via her blog and so she
began to support people as a personal freedom mentor. Five years on, Jane
is still travelling. See what Jane is up to now to at
www.scarletjonestravels.com.

Find more nomad stories at becomingadigitalnomad.com/stories.

Another very early example of telecommuting and working with computers
while away from the office comes from 1973. According to a January 1974
Cycle World article, a series of cassette tapes, phone adapters, and plastic time
cards were used to time the ISDT, a six-day motorcycle endurance race held in
the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts. (Computers had been used in previous
events, but only for backups, or they had created a lot of problems.) After riders
had checked in, the worker would call the computer center and replay the tape,
passing data to a computer in Michigan for compilation at a-then-state-of-the-art
75 baud, or bits per second.
Fast forward to December 1997, when a book by Hitachi executive Tsugio
Makimoto and Electronics Weekly writer David Manners was released. It
prophesied that smaller and more powerful computer chips, along with new
mobile devices and greater internet connectivity, would lead to a revolution in
how people worked, lived, and traveled.
The title: Digital Nomads.
Despite the extensive experience of both these authors, and although the book
came from a well-known UK publisher, it was virtually ignored by the public.
Maybe it was just ahead of its time, or perhaps people were too caught up in the
dot-com boom. Whatever the case, it predicted the future lifestyle and foresaw
the technological shift that was coming.
Before the 20th century ended, a few more building blocks were put in place that
made the digital nomad lifestyle technically possible. Paypal launched in 1998,
making it possible for people to get paid without a bank account, and laptops
began offering wi-fi in 1999. Elance (now Upwork), also launched in 1999, was
one of the earliest places to make money as a freelancer online. Still, this was an
exceptionally early time to be a digital nomad.