Deflexion.com

Thanks to this Wi-Fi Bedouins post in Bruce Sterling's Beyond the Beyond blog, I learned about Going Bedouin and Bedouins are Everywhere, which are two articles by Greg Olsen in the Charter Street blog. Here is an excerpt from Going Bedouin:

"What makes a neo-Bedouin approach [to business] different than traditional approaches is the commitment to seeking service-based alternatives to building or acquiring infrastructure that must be managed, moved or otherwise dealt with. Companies that make such a commitment can focus more of their energy and their resources on building products, supporting customers, or other core business needs."

These articles are mainly about business, but there is a lot to be said for going Bedouin in all aspects of life. I think that the Bedouin frame of mind is a key foundation to many of the choices I have made in my life, including my work (Infinite Ink) and my computer software & hardware choices. It's all about freedom, not being locked in, and agility.

2006-March-28 Update: I just read the New York Magazine article Up With Grups - The Ascendant Breed of Grown-Ups Who Are Redefining Adulthood, which, among other things, says:

"For a Grup, success isn’t about how many employees you have but how much freedom you have to walk, or boogie-board, away. ... In a recent Money magazine poll about bosses, 54 percent of the respondents said they wouldn’t want their boss’s job no matter how much money you paid them. Fifty-four percent."

This insightful article and the articles that I mention above have helped me to see that the Bedouin frame of mind is a key aspect of the current zeitgeist. It's a key to understanding Web 2.0 and I think (hope) it might be a key to solving some of the big problems in the world today.
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