Steve Roberts

From 1983 to 1991, high-tech nomad Steven K. Roberts pedaled 17,000 miles around the United States on a computerized and networked recumbent bicycle that allowed him to remain connected and productive while wandering freely. This blend of adventure and technology inevitably led to books, hundreds of articles, and consulting spinoffs -- but Roberts has now retired the $1.2 million BEHEMOTH to build Wordplay and Songline, a pair of networked canoe-scale amphibian pedal/solar/sail trimarans known as Microships. The bike has moved to The Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley; by Spring of 2003, Roberts and his partner will begin a multi-year coastal journey aboard their tiny boats after an increasingly ambitious series of test sails in the Pacific Northwest.

Prior to Steve's life as a technomad, he operated a consulting engineering business in the Midwest and published three books on microprocessor-based industrial control system design. After casting off the bonds of suburbia to seek passion and adventure, however, electronics became a liberating tool instead of a business. His technomadic machines represent the creative contributions of hundreds of industry volunteers and sponsors, and his once-radical notion of "nomadic connectivity" has become a fast-growing trend as computer and communication tools become ever smaller and more powerful.