Starlink Souls & Agentic Work
The new age of nomadism
The cliché of the laptop-toting nomad was always bound by two invisible leashes: a reliable urban fibre line and the discipline to stay glued to a glowing screen. Both constraints are eroding fast.
Starlink now blankets more than a hundred countries and territorial waters. A small dish and a car battery can pull broadband out of the sky in places that never ran a copper line or issued a café receipt.
Agentic AI is moving out of the lab. Autonomous software agents now run whole workflows with only a light human touch. They plan, negotiate, and close the loop while you watch from the sidelines.
Pair that with global broadband and location stops defining your career. You can code from an Andean retreat, ride a repositioning cruise to Japan, or spend winter in a Rocky Mountain chalet.
Most tasks fade into the background. You glance at alerts for the occasional calls that still need human judgment, then head out for a hike. The new nomad is always connected but rarely tethered.
That freedom raises a harder question: if you can earn anywhere, why choose here—and what do you owe the place? The worst digital nomads take value and move on. It’s no surprise that some communities aren’t thrilled.
AI has the potential to make us worse off at those things that make us human—listening, hosting, honest negotiation. The winners of new nomadism will blend software leverage with real-world presence. Treat every stop as a partnership that compounds, not a stepping stone on “your journey.”
Get this right and small towns turn into fresh innovation hubs. A sleepy port could host a zero-carbon makerspace. A mountain village might attract data scientists who double as pollinator farmers. Income flows through the cloud, but priorities stay local: clean water, walkable streets, lifelong learning.
Over time these hubs link up. They trade ideas, surplus power, even seeds over low-latency satellites. The result is a network of rooted, regenerative communities that export culture instead of just siphoning Wi-Fi. Think of “millions of Bhutans”: micro-states of culture and care, running on local renewables, mining BTC, and funding civic stewards who guard natural beauty.
This is more than remote work. It is a test of whether mobility can live alongside commitment. The ballast you carry—craft, curiosity, and the mark you leave—will decide if the next horizon is an escape or an upgrade for everyone involved.