Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10928032

by benrmatthews • 16 years ago

96 107 16 years ago

bbc.co.uk

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• 16 years ago

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.

arethuza2• 16 years ago

You're talking about memories

Sukotto• 16 years ago

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

metamemetics• 16 years ago

Which is why you would slowly replace brain matter with technology, cortical column by cortical column, until there was nothing left ;)

But honestly I think biotech could progress to the point to where biological aging is neutralized. Cells break down and make copying failures for only a few specific reasons. I think the biological will be preserved and merely augmented with better human-machine interfaces.

Also cloning yourself or making a digital backup from yourself isn't that much different from having kids. Both are to ensure the survival\existence of data whether its encoded genetically or not.

gaius5• 16 years ago

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.

jdietrich3• 16 years ago

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.

gaius5• 16 years ago

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.

hugh37• 16 years ago

How can he be a DJ if he doesn't have turntables?

billybob• 16 years ago

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

pchristensen5• 16 years ago

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

scott_s2• 16 years ago

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

hugh37• 16 years ago

Space is expensive monetarily, but how is it expensive psychologically?

I find _not_ having enough space to be psychologically expensive. Nothing better than going for a walk through your own house, knowing it's all yours and nobody can invade it. But hey, different people have different preferences...

notahacker• 16 years ago

besides which, two digital reading devices in addition to a laptop (and presumably a smartphone) isn't exactly minimalism...

paulgb2• 16 years ago

It is compared to the bookshelves, CD stacks, filing cabinets, and shoeboxes full of photographs that it replaces.

And that's not to mention the number of single-purpose devices each of these replaces: the smartphone is an alarm clock, watch, point-and-shoot camera, GPS, and MP3 player. The reading devices replace a printer (if you have access to a Kinkos when you really need a hard copy). The laptop replaces a TV, DVD player, and desktop computer.

kellysutton2• 16 years ago

I definitely agree with this and think it's fascinating. I feel the same attachment to my digital possessions as I do my few physical ones. The difference, however, is how much physical space each option consumes.

I should also point out that I needed the iPad for my job, as I develop apps from time to time.

derwiki• 16 years ago

Do you feel like you have less to worry about though? One of the advantages of this minimalism seems to be being able to walk into your room and not being overwhelmed with everything you own. So, even if you own as much music, books, etc.. out of sight, out of mind?

chrislloyd• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

Reminds me of another Steve, circa 1982:

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

die_sekte• 16 years ago

Klaus Biesenbach, not a programmer, also has a ultra-minimalistic apartment: http://www.wmagazine.com/artdesign/2009/01/klaus_haus and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdkfvPRejSQ

pchristensen5• 16 years ago

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

lotusleaf19873• 16 years ago

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?

tricky• 16 years ago

looks like an akai LPK25. The nanoSERIES keyboard is really hard to play - not very sensitive, keys are more like buttons. Used LPK25's are going for about $40 USD on ebay. Hoping to get one soon.

lotusleaf19873• 16 years ago

Thanks! Same here, would be awesome to have around since it's so portable. Appreciate the help.

funkdobiest• 16 years ago

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.

lotusleaf19873• 16 years ago

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.

emanuer• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

lzw8• 16 years ago

There is a- for lack of a better word-- synergy that comes with this lifestyle change. It really is a different way of living. One of the things that you change is what your values are-- what you value. When we lived in a house a lot of money went into house stuff. For instance, by now we'd have bought an HDTV to update the old TV we had. Of course an HDTV wouldn't fit in a backpack so we haven't bought one, and the savings of that offsets some of the increased costs of being nomadic.

Like anything else, it is best to work into it a bit at a time. It might be worth trying a 3 month consulting gig and then, after saving that money, try 3 months on the road as a nomad and see if you can earn money consulting that way. This way the initial gig covers the expenses if the nomadic lifestyle turns into a vacation where you just spend money.

But for us, paramount to being able to do this is the ability to earn our expenses. Most startups look at burn rate, we are keeping a keen eye on revenue vs. living expenses.

pclark• 16 years ago

"I do not have any other possession than what fits into my two suitcases" ... "Wherever my 30 inch monitor is, i call home"

isn't that a little counter intuitive? you're hardly portable.

hugh37• 16 years ago

A 30-inch monitor fits into a suitcase. Still, if I were rationalizing my life down to two suitcases (which, incidentally, I've done before, and I didn't much enjoy it) then I'd have more clothing and less 30-inch monitor.

jacquesm4• 16 years ago

Try that while raising a couple of children.

joezydeco• 16 years ago

Exactly. How does this Neunomadic lifestyle last beyond a single generation?

jacquesm4• 16 years ago

I don't even think you can make it last beyond a single generation, try this when you're 60+, when you are in need of a stable environment due to medical issues and so on.

It's great in theory when you're healthy, in your early 20's to early 30's, when you are independent and have no dependents, when you are living in a climate that is favorable, and when you're living in a city.

If any of those circumstances are not met you'll be either in a lot of trouble or you're most likely going to change.

Those that don't have the option to change we call street people.

And living off other people's couches and/or fridges and such does not make you an independent.

I can see a good reason for doing with 'less stuff', but this extreme is simply not realistic on anything but the smallest of scales.

It'd be tough if all your friends decided to do it tomorrow and you'd all want to sleep on each others' no longer existent couches...

jonknee• 16 years ago

He'll need a bigger backpack.

thesethings• 16 years ago

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

sumeetjain• 16 years ago

Do you have any links to articles/books? This is precisely the kind of information I'm looking for.

jacquesm4• 16 years ago

That sounds interesting, do you have any pointers?

mdh• 16 years ago

"Another roof, another proof." - Paul Erdos

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

athom• 16 years ago

I was about to mention this guy myself. Kudos!

lzw8• 16 years ago

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....

andresmh• 16 years ago

Do you travel only to places with good internet connection?

lzw8• 16 years ago

Not intentionally. It has sorta happened to be that way so far. Apparently this internet thing has been adopted widely.

But the intention is to be able to be fully productive with only an occasional or intermittent internet connection.

Really developed countries: We have internet where we stay. This is more common than we expected.

Developed countries: We use mobile broadband for occasional net connectivity on demand, and use email and SMS to notify us about important events. So far all of our services are manage hosted so I've never gotten a "the server is down" message.

Undeveloped Countries: Plan is to check in once a week with a cybercafe or wifi hotspot.

GSM is a global standard and so, with an unlocked iPhone you can get pre-paid SIMs with dataplans.

Fortunately for everyone Apple is now selling unlocked iPhones as a matter of course in countries with multiple iPhone carriers, like Canada, France, Germany and the UK.

nudge• 16 years ago

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.

lzw8• 16 years ago

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.

dandelany• 16 years ago

> 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.

Has this assumption proved true so far? How true? What was your origin city, and where have you been? I'm quite interested in this strategy, it would be so nice to pair low-cost living with travel.

elai3• 16 years ago

While i was on my long term trip I found it quite unproductive trying to find that stable internet connection, and a new place to explore provided much more of a distraction than home. Do find travelling decreases your productivity?

rdl2• 16 years ago

I am trying e same thing over the next five months, but I plan to rent apartments for a month or so and travel in between. I like having the Internet, shower, and laundry problems resolved, and I'd like to get to know places beyond superficial tourist level. Plus I have friends visiting for a few weeks at a time.

Which cities have worked out well or poorly for you?

I'm probably traveling a bit heavy right now (mbp 17, 7d and lenses, kindle dx, iPad, outdoor, business, and casual clothes, global blackberry) and going for value luxury (50-100 per night for a 2br 5 star hotel suite, or a nice condo rental). I think that will increase my productivity and happiness, but I'll try the lowest cost option later this year. The people in student or backpacker places are definitely more interesting than at the oriental or peninsula. Mainly Asia and au/nz for now, and Europe probably next, and then maybe a couple months of USA.

DanielBMarkham• 16 years ago

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

mikaelgramont• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

lzw8• 16 years ago

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.

rdouble3• 16 years ago

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.

lzw8• 16 years ago

Everybody wants to hang out with a traveller. They all have questions. People who would never dream of doing what we do, are happy to tell us their dreams about doing what we do, believe it or not. Everyone seems to find the idea romantic even if they could never do it. Back when I was traveling by myself I found it easier to meet women on the road than at home. I guess maybe you would think these women were "really strange and desperate" because many of them were also solo travelers.

I do like the term "settled society", as there is a strong temptation to see people who don't do this as having settled for something adequate.

Travelling only changes your location, it doesn't change who you are. Who I am is someone who has trouble meeting people, but found that travel provided more opportunity for social interaction and people more willing to be open with me.

rdouble3• 16 years ago

People do want to hang out with a traveller - for an evening.

There's also a difference between being a "traveller" and just being a guy with no home and no stuff. The article seemed to be more about the latter.

maryrosecook• 16 years ago

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.

hugh37• 16 years ago

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.

rapind• 16 years ago

How long did you try it for. In my experience it can take a little while to adapt. Just like you got homesick that first time at sleepaway camp as a kid.

I did a decent amount of backpacking back in the day, and I remember the initial adjustment to be pretty tough and very lonely if you're not already a very outgoing type. Initially I hated it, then eventually I loved it, but some may not.

sedachv• 16 years ago

"If you're single, only really strange and desperate people want to date you."

Listen and weep:

http://brandonovak.com/nudie-novaks-sexcapades

"When he was a homeless heroin addict, Brandon banged a waitress INSIDE OF A DUMPSTER."

gilgad13• 16 years ago

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.

RexRollman2• 16 years ago

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).

samratjp• 16 years ago

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.

BrandonM2• 16 years ago

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.

sliverstorm• 16 years ago

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.

brianobush• 16 years ago

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.

oiuytghyuj• 16 years ago

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.

DannoHung• 16 years ago

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.

elai3• 16 years ago

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!

tomwalker• 16 years ago

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

Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

Related Stories