Posts Tagged ‘Computer Currents’
Journey of a High-Tech Nomad – book review – Computer Currents
This is one of the most touching and insightful reviews of my Computing Across America book, and the author looks past the obvious technomadic content and focuses on the more challenging human issues… matters of the heart, cast into bas relief by a life on the road. As I work on the new book —…
Read MoreAn Ongoing DIALOG
Before taking off on the bicycle in 1983, I had a little business called the Information Institute (a bit grandiose). I was mostly doing freelance engineering and tech writing, but was also an information broker, leveraging my familiarity with the DIALOG system to do research for clients. At the time of this article, four years…
Read MoreLayers of Dataspace – Computer Currents
I have often mused about this article, and how it addressed a critical (but rarely discussed) issue at the time. I mean, think about it… in the mid-1980s, we suddenly had new tools that could render our physical location irrelevant, reducing borders to mere formalities. Yet at the same time, we were all flocking to…
Read MoreThe Illusion of Stability
by Steven K. Roberts Computer Currents Cary, North Carolina November 1, 1987 It was a hard day at the office — eight grueling hours of hard work. Not only were the usual deadlines looming, but I had to write a proposal and debug a strange temperature-sensitive hardware problem before a media demo. It was a…
Read MoreHam Radio in Your Briefcase
by Steven K. Roberts Computer Currents October 18, 1987 Arlington, VA — 14,137 miles At first glance this subject appears irrational, inappropriate, perhaps even sniffing of illegality. Ham radio in a series of articles about doing business on the road??? Hmm. FCC regulations clearly state that amateur radio may not be used to conduct business in…
Read MorePaper Databases
This is quaint now, 30 years later, discussing areas in which paper is still better than a computer… yet it still has a grain of truth even though “hypertext is a step in the right direction.” by Steven K. Roberts Computer Currents October 5, 1987 written in Reston, VA This is typical. Here I am in…
Read MoreLaptop Gawkers – A New Biohazard
I hardly need to write an introduction to this one… I bet most people reading this have had the uncomfortable experience of being on a plane or other public place, trying to work, and realizing that a seatmate or other stranger is reading the screen. You squirm to change the angle, switch to another task,…
Read MoreMicrodocumentation on the Road
Three decades after this photo, carrying hundreds of gigabytes on my key ring and picking up 8-terabyte drives on Amazon for a the cost of dinner-for-two in a tourist town, it is really hard to remember a time before PDFs. But in 1987 there was a big challenge when riding a computerized bicycle still under…
Read MoreLife in the Solar System – Computer Currents
During my bicycling adventures, I often spoke of the essential tools that were integrated into a liberating system… recumbent, laptop, solar panels, network connection, and base office. This lively column had so much reader feedback (bypassing the editor, who had no clue about the galvanizing effect of including my email address) that I began to…
Read MoreModem Up, Move ’em Out – Computer Currents
It’s easy to forget how much we had to busy ourselves with the low-level hardware just to get a net connection… physically connecting to phone lines, dealing with bulky and sometimes error-prone acoustic couplers, long-distance dialup to the nearest network node (making connect-time charges even worse). The cable in the photo above was an essential…
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