Road warrior (computing)
The term Road Warrior is a term used to describe business people who travel extensively for business. Typically a Road Warrior requires use of mobile devices such as tablet, laptop, and smartphone and the Internet connectivity to conduct business.[1] The term has often been used with regards to salespeople who travel often and who seldom are in the office. Today it is used for anyone who work outside the office and travel for business.
History
Origin
The term is believed to originates in the Mel Gibson movie Mad Max 2:The Road Warrior (1981).
Early Days (Before 1990's)
In the pre-mobile technology era Road Warrior where simple people whose jobs required a lot of travel either by auto or plane. The majority of this group where salespeople and professional that needed to be with clients such as accountants, consultant and etc. They typically would need to come back to their company's office to due business various processes and administrative duties. The office held limited resources that were best used by centralizing them. Such as phones, fax machines and computer technology such as; terminal to mainframe computers, desktop computers and etc.
As both computer and telecommunication technology became more portable and less expensive the need for Road Warriors to come back to offices for use of limited and costly resources began to wane.
Major technologies that impacted Road Warriors
- Internet
- Text Pager
- Portable terminal - Allowed Road Worker to access work computers for 1st time.
- Personal Computer
- Email -Allowed information to move and be seen anywhere
- Portable Computers like Compaq Transportable PC
- Portable Cell Phone
- Blackberry Phone - Allow secure message between users.
- Smartphones -
- Wireless Access (WiFi)
Culture
The term Road Warrior has been credited to the 1981 movie Mad Max 2 sub-titled "Road Warrior" starring Mel Gibson. It's harsh life on the road in a post-apocalyptic world was used to symbolize the hardship of modern business travel.
The in the 2009 movie "Up in the Air" that starred George Clooney as person who fully lived the Road Warrior life to the extreme.
Modern Day
Road Warriors use mobile devices and laptop computer that connect to company's information systems or with Software as a Service (SaaS) providers that specialized applications necessary from them to conduct their work duties.
Road Warriors have proven that working outside of the office is not only possible but also given the state of computing and telecommunication has proven that other who do not require travel as part of their work can also work outside of the office effectively. There are several labels used to describe them Telecommuting, Remote Workers, Teleworkers and the list continues.
There are other workers with different labels used to describe them such as Digital Nomads or Nomads who perform work outside of their workplace and choice to travel as a matter of personal choice and not as part of their work duties.