The Digital Nomad

From the book Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order :

'(Electronic objects of leisure) like the laptop computer, are ubiquitous today, will help create a different human being.

"'The memory card (ID card) will become the principal artificial limb of a person, at once an identity card, a checkbook, a telephone, and a fax machine--in sum, nomadic man's passport. It will be a kind of artificial self.

"To use it will only require plugging it into the global electronic networks of information and commerce, the oases of the new nomads.

"Middle-level nomads will stay in places that are impersonal, like the hotels that today ring airports throughout the world. Only the most fortunate rich nomads will have the means to become property owners in the large cities, which will be the magnetic poles for their brethren from all areas and regions of the globe.

"Cities will be fortified, dangerous places, the tangled heart of electronic networks, a cabled field of dreams."

The book was published in 1991.

Prophetic indeed.