Yet nonetheless, just as Orientalist tales emerged from the heart of Western empires, so too do digital nomad fantasies of ­today. In digital nomad Daniel Kay’s self-­reflection, “Digital nomads are unintentional pawns in a new wave of economic imperialism.”34 This fantasy embodies Silicon Valley imperialism—­a phenomenon in which the Valley materializes new nodes and edges to facilitate surplus capital accumulation at home in California. Yet the nomadic avatar—as an allegory for a highly paid worker or even a roving tech com­pany like Nokia itself—is conditioned by nineteenth-­century colonial fiction. Reliant on location ­independence, they give up spatial rootedness for exotic locales, cheap living costs, and an ability to remain anchored in Western capital flows through remote l­abor and outsourcing. As a form of geographic arbitrage—in which commodities and l­abor are bought and sold in uneven markets to capitalize on better prices35—­digital nomads such as James Taylor mobilize Sil- icon Valley platforms like Upwork to accumulate money while sleeping. As another self-­proclaimed “libertarian nomad” from San Francisco living in Cluj explained, the idea of settling down is not at all appealing. The world is global, and success means being at home in the global world. “­People used to brag about buying and selling real estate developments. I brag about developing my own apps while living in Airbnbs,” he told me. In his analy­sis, apps, data, and the sharing economy hold more value than real estate. While this elides the materialities that digitality both necessitates and produces, from hardware min- ing to outsourced l­abor,36 it also erases the dispossessions that digital nomads impart. As digital nomad Kay self-­critiques: “This is gentrification at its simplest. This is globalization. . . . ​­Every dollar we spend, ­every blog post we write, and ­every coworking space we patronize contributes to this ­inequality. . . . ​We appropriate places and lead trends, we go where life is cheap but hip, and we are a ­little bit in love with our own lives. . . . ​We have the economic potential to destroy communities.”37 As I continue to explore, the landing of digital nomads and nomadic firms reproduces nineteenth-­century imperial desires while also materializing novel contexts of dispossession and exploitation.