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Digital Minimalists Thrive Without Possessions, Claim It's the Future Lifestyle

by Matt Evans on August 16, 2010 at 05:45 PM

Digital Minimalists

Traditionally, the art of de-cluttering a house meant large garage sales, or, at least, finding friends to saddle with all of your needless junk. Now, sites like eBay have made the whole process easier, connecting you with millions of strangers... to saddle with all of your needless junk. Yet, as BBC reports, a select few people have found their traditional, analog lives too cumbersome, and have chosen digital lifestyles as minimalist alternatives.

The idea is to replace physical possessions with digital replacements. Take Kelly Sutton, for instance, whose website, Cultofless.com, helped him sell or donate most of his possessions, leaving him with the bare essentials (a little more than a mattress and a laptop). Sutton feels that "cutting down on physical commodities in general might be a trend of my generation," but that replacing them with digital counterparts is inevitable.

Others, such as Chris Yurista and Joshua Klein, have gone even further by taking to the road with only a backpack, laptop, hard drive and a few other possessions, sleeping wherever they can. For Klein, a D.C. based DJ, manual possessions like records just don't cut it as they are bound to bend and break eventually, whereas mp3s will theoretically last forever and require virtually no upkeep. Though, not having a roof over their heads has its consequences, and both attest to the lifestyle being loathsome when their gadgets have issues or when finding a vacant couch seems impossible. For now, we'll stick to the real world, where we can enjoy the comfort of our own beds. [From: BBC]

Tags: culture, digital, DigitalMinimalists, lifestyle, top, web

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