One of the first modern coworking spaces, C-Base in Berlin, was launched 30 years ago by a group of computer engineers as a “hacker space” in which to share their tech and techniques. Similarly, many we first encountered in our anthropological research into the emerging world of digital nomadism in the mid-2010s were hackers and computer coders.
Nearly a decade later, we returned to Chiang Mai to see what had happened to these pioneers of the borderless, desk-free life. We wondered if they had been put off by the throngs of travellers who have followed in their sandal-clad footsteps, attracted by glamorous – if often inaccurate – images of the digital nomad lifestyle.
One such nomad hotspot is Yellow Coworking, launched in 2020 as a blockchain-oriented, collaborative escape zone from the COVID pandemic. The later stages of the pandemic were an interesting time to be in Chiang Mai. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was followed by mass layoffs in Silicon Valley, when Twitter, Meta, Coinbase and Microsoft all made significant cuts.
