Digital Bohemians Ask What Is Work?

Digital Bohemians Ask What Is Work?

Excerpts by: Sascha Lobo and Holm Friebe

There is an alternative to the rigid concept of full-time employment, which after all has resulted not only in mass unemployment,

but also in mass dissatisfaction.

Claiming confidently "We'll find something better than a permanent position, no problem!", a class of "digital bohemians" is emerging, and not only in the big cities, as the new avant-garde of the working society. Recently, we were sent the business card of a Berlin dentist which listed only an e-mail address and a mobile phone number. The young dentist, it turns out, doesn't have her own practice, renting space instead on a temporary basis in dentist surgeries which happen to have a vacancy. Her regular patients follow her loyally, and new ones come by word of mouth. Now, dentistry would hardly count as one of the classic bohemian professions, yet this example shows that certain ways of working and organizing one's work – long practised only by artists – are now becoming more widespread in other areas, too.