
Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive  - benrmatthews
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10928032
======
rdouble
In the past I've lived sort of like this and found it quite lonely and
alienating. What the article doesn't mention is that nobody really wants to
hang out with the weird guy with no stuff and no apartment. If you're single,
only really strange and desperate people want to date you. I also found that
the act of finding another place to stay quickly became tedious. In the past,
nomads were out being nomadic with the rest of their huge nomadic tribe. They
weren't just bouncing around settled society with a laptop by themselves.

~~~
maryrosecook
People who travel have interesting stories from their travels. They have a
broad outlook and set of morals, because they have met people from diverse
groups. They are social because they have had to be outgoing to make friends.
They can form long term friendships because they return to places. They are
romantically successful because they are appealing and meet a lot of people.

There is nothing inherent in being a traveler that makes them "weird", though
they may be unusual because of their unusual life. I can't see why either
having or not having stuff is relevant.

Travelers make great friends who I miss when they are not around.

~~~
hugh3
_People who travel have interesting stories from their travels._

I hate to sound negative, but I find that some of the worst bores are people
who can't stop talking about their last journey. Having been around the world
a few times myself, I often have to bite my tongue to stop myself from telling
too many "that reminds me of this one time in [random city X]" stories, as
people do get bored of hearing them, and they're rarely as interesting to
others as they are to the people who were there.

~~~
BrandonM
That's really a shame. I have a couple really good friends with whom sharing
experiences is one of the most important parts of our relationship. It took
some practice at first, but focusing completely on the person telling the
story[1], and actually telling meaningful stories[2] turns out to not be that
hard once you get the hang of it.

[1] This means not only listening and popping in with comments and questions
here and there, but actually trying to imagine the feelings you would have
experienced had you been there; or even more interestingly, understanding how
the storyteller felt in the context of his or her own life (this requires
knowing the person rather well).

[2] The intent is really the main thing here. Some people approach
storytelling about their adventures as a way to brag. The "right way" to do it
is to tell the story in a way that the listeners can imagine themselves there.
This changes the context from "I'm cooler than you," to "I had a great
experience that I'd like to share with you."

------
gaius
_The DJ has now substituted his bed for friends' couches_

How does this scale when no-one has free crash space to give...?

It's like those TV shows where a family give up the corporate rat race and go
and run a B&B or a vineyard in the country, who are their customers apart from
corporate workers? It's not a revolution if only a small percentage of the
population can ever do it.

~~~
jdietrich
It doesn't scale, it's not intended to scale. _If_ millions of people were
vagabonding, we could look at an array of possible options, the most obvious
being an AirBnB-style approach to renting rooms for days or weeks at a time.
If you're happy to share a house, it's already cheaper to spend a month each
in Paris, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Edinburgh and Barcelona than it would be
to stay in Paris, including airfare.

Housing is currently relatively illiquid because the demand for liquid housing
is minimal. There's a big gap between "the place you live for years at a time"
and "the place you vacation for a week or two" because that's what the market
demands. The backbackers hostel only came into existence when airfares became
affordable and young people started travelling internationally. Same with
Spanish resorts and the package holiday, same with seaside B&Bs and the
railway. If technology allows it and people demand it, we'll see it appear
quite quickly.

Your second point is the same faulty logic that presumes "we'll always need
people to actually make things/sweep the roads/other menial labour".
Mechanisation and automation supplants the need for most of those workers,
freeing them up to do work better suited to humans - usually in the service
industry. The majority of westerners work in the service industry already, it
only stands to reason that they will become more skilled and more specialised.
There is absolutely no reason why we can't have a huge number of people
running small B&Bs or vineyards or boutiques or cafés. The trends behind this
article make it clear that we can't expect to continue running an economy on
selling 'stuff', the future economy is clearly based on cultural and social
experiences.

~~~
gaius
I presumed no such thing. The people they left behind are doing service work
remember: they're accountants, lawyers, bankers, and so on. But how many
corporate workers drinking does it take to make a vineyard a viable business?
Or vacationing, a boutique B&B?

Because if you have two B&B owners who simply swap to go on holiday, or two
vineyards who simply drink each other's wine, then you've invented a perpetual
motion machine.

~~~
jdietrich
It's called "The Economy". I have something that you want, you have something
that I want. We swap, usually using a token of exchange, and we're both better
off for the exchange. That basic exchange, multiplied by technology, is why
nearly everyone in the world will be much richer than their parents and why
their children will be richer still.

Accountants, lawyers and bankers all perform services. Not _fun_ services, but
services nonetheless. They're no different from a musician or a masseuse or a
bicycle mechanic.

Corporations generate lots of wealth and engage in lots of transactions, but
so do the aggregate of small businesses and sole traders. There's nothing
magical about a big company versus a small one.

The big change in the economy is that a) stuff has got very cheap and b) lots
of people can do useful work from anywhere with WiFi. The basic rules are
exactly the same, but the economy of 2030 will be barely recognisable, just as
the economy of 2010 would be barely recognisable in 1990. As we generate more
and more intangible wealth, tangible wealth becomes less and less important to
the economy.

If you think that a service-based economy is a "perpetual motion machine", you
really need to do a bit of reading up on economics. Wealth is wealth, it
doesn't matter how you generate it as long as you do.

~~~
gaius
Yeah, you are completely missing my point. The fact is, if you set up a
business that sells luxury goods that people spend their discretionary income
on, then there have to be those people in the system. For every bohemian
running a boutique B&B in rural France, there have to be 20 (say) yuppies
elsewhere doing something else to pay for it as guests. Can one lawyer stay in
20 B&Bs? Or drink the production of 20 vineyards?

So this is why I say, the dream of dropping out of the rat race and doing that
necessarily must remain a dream only for the majority.

~~~
jdietrich
Do lodging-house owners not drink wine? Do vintners not vacation? People
making luxury goods earn an income, often a very good income, and often they
spend rather a lot of that income on luxury goods. It is perfectly possible to
sustain an economy where the main productive output is luxury goods - it could
be argued that many international cities are exactly that.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that the money a lawyer earns in
exchange for his time is "real money", whereas the money earned by a fashion
designer or an organic honey grower or someone who restores vingage fixed-gear
bicycles is somehow not real money.

The economy only demands productivity. It cares not one jot whether that
production is hamburger buns or brioche, whether it is kalashnikovs or
designer garden tools. All that matters is that enough people will pay for
what you do. It should be self-evident that artistry is highly marketable.

The real growth in the current economy is beauty. Apple is testament to that -
their products are made by Quanta and Foxconn like everyone else's, but they
are worth more by simple merit of being beautiful. Every year the metal and
plastic and glass is worth less and the design and styling worth more, that's
why we in the west no longer manufacture very much at all. The taste of Steve
Jobs and the imagination of Jony Ive is worth more than any factory machine.

For every bohemian running a boutique B&B, we merely need 20 other people who
make or do something that other people like. They don't have to wear a tie or
work in a tall building, they only need to be productive.

~~~
gaius
_You seem to be under the misapprehension that the money a lawyer earns in
exchange for his time is "real money", whereas the money earned by a fashion
designer or an organic honey grower or someone who restores vingage fixed-gear
bicycles is somehow not real money._

Our friend the DJ, he has an external source of economic value - his friend's
surplus (i.e. they can afford to rent more space than they need, so he can
stay there). If his friends have no surplus of this kind, his model collapses.
So really, his lifestyle is only possible because it is subsidized.

Our hypothetical B&B owner - there are shows about this nightly on British TV,
always the same pattern - has made some money typically through selling his
house in the UK at the right time, quit his job, bought a dilapidated
farmhouse in rural France, done it up, and is now waiting for yuppie
holidaymakers to come stay. He has no skills that are relevant in the local
economy. He depends specifically and entirely on people who live the lifestyle
he left behind for his business. Now I am not saying that what he does has no
economic value. I am saying that to trade, you need to have a) something to
trade and b) someone to trade with. The people he trades with are people with
jobs in big cities who want to escape to the country. If these people have
also dropped out to live an idyllic lifestyle, what demand is there from them
for his service?

I dunno, think of a world where everyone's say a chicken farmer. How do they
create value by trading chickens with each other?

------
emanuer
Since almost 4 years now I do not have any other possession than what fits
into my two suitcases. Wherever my 30 inch monitor is, I call home. I am very
comfortable with the fact that I don't need to manage my possessions. And
Dropbox, Google Apps and alike even made my fears of data loss a thing of the
past.

I enjoy moving to a different country almost every year, thanks to being a
digital vagabond.

I am taking a wild guess; The past 400.000 years of evolution in which our
bodies and minds adapted to a nomadic lifestyle may still resonate in our
genes. Only since a few thousand years were a majority of my ancestors bound
to one place and this short period is unlikely to have had any genetic impact.
A lack of constricting possessions is surprisingly rewarding (constricting in
terms of hard to move). I suspect that this reward is universal to humans
which would imply some kind of genetically predetermined preference. But it is
just a wild guess.

Yet I feel with my son's first birthday approaching this lifestyle will be
hard to maintain.

~~~
Dornkirk
Are you self-employed or do you work freelance or who do you work for and what
do you do?

I only ask because this is something I'm very much interested in doing myself,
but I'm very apprehensive about making a big change like this due to job/money
concerns.

~~~
Daniel42
Same thing for me. I just got my CS master degree and now I want to discover
the world with only my bike, my laptop and my reflex camera, a few month to a
couple of years at the same place...

But I'm worried by the first move. Where I live I got a lot of job opportunity
but I don't know if I will be able to find a job in another country quickly
enough and it doesn't work very well remotely.

~~~
azim
Look for a job where you can work remotely. Many US-based companies are
striving for an increasingly remote workforce in order to reduce their cost of
doing business. At my first job out of college, at a large tech company, they
actually wanted us to be remote so they wouldn't have to pay for office space.

------
billybob
An illusion. You're as attached to your digital possessions as you were to
your physical ones. You just have different preferences.

~~~
pchristensen
That's fine, you just don't need to pay for space for stuff. Space is very,
very expensive monetarily and psychologically.

~~~
scott_s
So is the psychological cost of never knowing where you will sleep.

~~~
pchristensen
There's a big difference between the space for you (important) and the space
for 200 DVDs, or 60 changes of clothes, or a set of lawn tools, or rarely used
sporting equipment, or ...

~~~
scott_s
Indeed, there is, but at least one of the people profiled in the article
doesn't even have a space for himself.

------
chrislloyd
As well as being a bad-ass programmer, Steve Dekorte is also a great example
of this neavu-minimalism. His blog and Io show how deeply he has taken this
"philosophy" (<http://dekorte.com> and <http://www.iolanguage.com>).

I also don't want to sound too creepy but he has a awesome apartment:
<http://twitter.com/stevedekorte/status/10954098266> and
<http://twitter.com/stevedekorte/status/10901308299>

~~~
dieterrams
Reminds me of another Steve, circa 1982:

<http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0712/y_walker08.html>

------
gilgad13
Maybe I just don't get it, but the things keeping me tied to my apartment are
my bed, shower and stove, not my shelves and shelves of physical media. I
don't see how the digitalization of my live helps with those things.

------
jacquesm
Try that while raising a couple of children.

~~~
thesethings
Actually, I've read some very moving accounts by people who are nomadic with
kids.

~~~
jacquesm
That sounds interesting, do you have any pointers?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
<http://www.weliveonaboat.com/>

I used to read Steve Roberts digital nomad site for some time and I found
links to familes living on sailboats and travelling but it seems those links
are gone. The above was the first one I found on google.

------
pchristensen
Gosh I love the idea of doing this! Too bad my wife and kids won't go for it.
:(

------
brianobush
Not really minimalists... they depend on others for things they need. If they
were truly minimalists, they would live in one of those micro-shacks, hacking
basic on an Apple I replica that is powered by solar power, while watching the
tomatoes ripen.

------
mdh
"Another roof, another proof." _\- Paul Erdos_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s>

~~~
athom
I was about to mention this guy myself. Kudos!

------
RexRollman
I recently started down this trail to simplify my life and draw down my
personal property. I got rid of my DVDs because I simply wasn't watching them.
I ripped every one of my CDs in FLAC format and then gave them away to
friends. And these days, instead of a netbook and a desktop, I have only a
single laptop running Arch Linux.

The one thing I cannot move on from is my book collection. I love books and I
have two bookshelves with 285 graphic novels and novels (according to my
LibraryThing account). And I am starting to make use of sites like Project
Guttenburg to read public domains works (using FBReader).

------
sliverstorm
Living a nomadic lifestyle can be fun, but I like knowing where I'm going to
sleep. If I lived in the middle of a plains or was hiking down a trail, I know
that I will be sleeping 'up ahead' or 'over there' or 'on the side of this
trail'. However, in urban environments you actually have to find somewhere to
sleep.

I'm also fond of my textbooks, which haven't yet been satisfactorily
digitized, and my motorcycles and associated tools and parts, which haven't
been successfully digitized either.

------
mikaelgramont
I like how the reasoning behind the move to MP3s instead of discs is that MP3s
don't wear out. Because, you know, hard disks don't wear out either... And
with the whole move-to-digital thing, you might think you have less stuff, but
what you're doing is transferring your belongings from one device to the next
over time. Over the course of your life, you're gonna own dozens of laptops
and the energy and the chemicals released to build those aren't free. Compare
that to books and disks you bought once and for all (granted they don't wear
out). Maybe the move to all-digital is for the better, but it's just not that
obvious to me.

~~~
rmc
Yes harddrives wear out, but you can easily get a new harddrive and copy the
stuff across seamlessly. It's like shelves for records. If you shelves that
your records are on break, just get some new shelves and copy (i.e. move) your
record collection across.

------
DannoHung
Man, I hate traveling. I can understand the appeal of a spartan lifestyle, but
I can't understand the appeal of not knowing where your head is going to rest
tonight.

~~~
elai
Guidebooks, smartphone map search, a prepaid cellphone & SIM and planning a
day or two ahead solves all of that! Also staying more than one day. A few of
these people aren't long term nomads although, they're more freeloaders or
bums. The first guy has an apartment!

------
oiuytghyuj
Not planning on going quite that far - but we are thinking of saving $200,000
by buying a one bedroom apartment with a few Kindle's instead of a 2Bed place
with lots of bookshelves.

All the DVDs are already ripped to a couple of hard drives, the disks but in
DJ CD files and the cases thrown away - that saved a 6' bookcase.

------
iliketosleep
this might be a trend of the future. people are more mobile these days, and
physical possessions can keep people tied down. i once thought about what i
really need, and 80% of it is on my computer! time to start a remote backup
company :)

------
nickpinkston
Brain uploaders are missing that backing up your brain would create a clone of
your mind - not transfer your conscious experience inside a digital world.
Vacations of this nature would be your clone telling you the good time they
had.

~~~
arethuza
You're talking about memories

~~~
Sukotto
Only if you believe that you are solely the sum of your memories.

~~~
arethuza
Sorry, that was an indirect reference to Philip K. Dick

------
samratjp
Man, it seems as if the only thing missing is a data bank where you can drop
off your hard drive and the bank will store it for you and even lend out free
space to others at an interest. Yay virtual currency.

~~~
BrandonM
It's not quite what you describe, but bank vaults are actually quite cheap.
The computer expert firm I work for has two large vaults (something like 8 cu.
ft. each) at a KeyBank where we store scores of hard drives. We make a trip
every Friday to rotate our set of backup RAIDs. It's a very simple,
straightforward process, and I think our cost is something like $40/month for
both vaults. You could probably get a vault big enough for a 2 TB external
drive for something like $5-10/month.

------
DanielBMarkham
I love this story. Sounds like a great life.

For me I think this works best after you've done the kids thing, if you plan
on doing that. But I strongly agree with the premise here: people are
naturally nomadic

------
tomwalker
If anyone wants a place to crash in London, email me

------
lzw
My co-founder and I have been doing this for three years. We have two
backpacks and we are nomadic.

Interestingly, it isn't online services that have enabled this so much as a
lifestyle choice. We value travel and figured it was cheaper to run our
startup in most parts of the world than it was in our origin city.

We don't use a lot of online services for our business. Biggest one is Gmail,
really, and hosting. Things we couldn't take with us.

I run a virtual machine on my laptop and under it I have a server that acts as
our "intranet server" and so all of the collaboration tools, etc run there. I
also start servers periodically while developing something that will
eventually run in the cloud to test it out before running it online.

We're geared to be able to work full time without access to the internet.
We're expecting to be in places where there is no internet. However, for the
past 3 years that we've been traveling we've had pretty much full time
internet access so far. When we're without internet we use an ad-hoc wifi
network so we always have our "local network" with us.

Other than what fits in the backpacks we just have a couple boxes in storage.
The most stressful experience has been going over all of our stuff and getting
rid of it until we fit in the laptop. That took several months of work and
because many of the possessions had a history it was not easy.

But now, we can go anywhere anytime we want, just about. It is very
liberating!

Am willing to answer most questions....

~~~
nudge
I would be interested to know, simply because I wonder about it for my own
projects, how you deal with (the possibility of) server/db/other problems with
your site when you are going somewhere that has no internet access.

~~~
lzw
We're using AppEngine and it hasn't been a problem at all. This is part of the
reason we chose AppEngine.

I'd be very hesitant to choose anything where I have to manage the host
myself.

------
lzw
One of the biggest efforts in making this kind of a transition is the
digitization of your life. This is a huge project, and some of the work is
still ongoing.

1) Music and Movies. About the easiest as ripping CDs and DVDs is not that
hard.

2) Photographs. There was a time when I shot on film, and so for all the
images taken before then, they needed to be scanned. Scanning paper photos on
a flatbed is not too bad, but scanning negatives is very slow and a very
hands-on process. But it does produce the best results.

3) Books. This is the hardest. I stopped buying books about 5 years ago
because ebooks weren't really ready to meet my needs then (I hate the kindle)
and only started buying again now because the iPad does.

But all these physical books. Scanning them is really a pain. Most of them
just got tossed. We had huge collections of old instruction manuals that are
long out of print and obsolete as well.

Unfortunately, the books were an almost total loss. We flatbed scanned a few
pages here and there and that's it.

4) Storage and backup. We've iterated several times in our strategy here. This
is something to consider very carefully. The solution isn't the same between
even the two of us, so you'll have to find your own.

But keep at least 2 copies of everything in such a way as you always know what
the prime copy is.

------
lotusleaf1987
Slightly off topic...anyone know what kind of keyboard that is he had? Looks
super useful being so small. Is it a Korg? This on:
<http://www.korg.com/nanoseries> ? Confirmation?

~~~
funkdobiest
It does look like a Korg. From that picture his laptop looks like either a
Dell or IBM, yet the article says he uses a MBP. Also I think it's kind of
funny, the irony of this guy being a travel agent in this world where that job
is becoming absolete due to the same technology that keeps from having to pay
rent.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
It looks like a black Macbook to me. It just seems like more effort than
getting a studio apartment and living lean. Simplicity is key. I need
consistency.

