digital slomad

 The digital nomad appeared around 2016, often a figure seated in front of a laptop in a coffee shop for some hours.   The idea that shaped the life of this new kind of worker was that with your laptop by your side you could work anywhere. You no longer needed to be in an office but you absolutely needed a good connection to the internet. This meant that you could work and travel and explore new places.

 A few years before the pandemic struck digital nomadism had been refined into digital slomadism, a movement that espoused travel at a slower pace, giving the digital slomad time to really get to know a place before they moved on again. Instead of two weeks they might spend six months in the new location.

 In the time of COVID-19 many more people became remote workers although, rather than heading off to Bali, they could only content themselves with travel within Australia and, even then, border closures made life difficult.  Many more digital nomads who had been making their way around the world were suddenly forced to become digital slomads and stay put for a while.