Unlike digital nomads, road warriors do not necessarily choose to travel; it is part of their work duties.
The term is believed to originate in the Mel Gibson movie Mad Max 2:The Road Warrior (1981).
In the pre-mobile technology era, road warriors were people whose jobs required a lot of travel, either by car or plane.
As both computer and telecommunication technologies 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.
The 2009 movie "Up in the Air" starred George Clooney as a person who fully lives the Road Warrior life to the extreme.