Just as I was about to hit the road (driving the van to Vancouver for Expo 86), there was a small flurry of media coverage announcing the start of the second trip in the Computing Across America adventure. During the first trip, I had written a regular column in USA Today, so it was nice…

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My mission as a USA Today columnist during the Computing Across America adventure was to report on interesting ways that people were using computers… and this one was more of a departure than usual from my technomadic and networking focus. I also wrote about computerized cows in a short Online Today article in early 1986. …

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I remember this event with deep fondness… I often used to joke during my high-tech bicycling years that I was “an agent of Future Shock,” and this is one moment that epitomized that. The world was changing fast, and the tiny microculture of online denizens danced playfully in a whole different reality than the one…

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Part of my column in USA Today while pedaling across the US…  by Steven K. Roberts USA Today October 18, 1984 NORWOOD, Colo. — We drove deep into southwest Colorado through the scenic San Miguel valley, past this little town and up a long unpaved hill. Rick Hollinbeck peered at the rutted road ahead, shrugged, downshifted,…

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My brief few months as a USA Today columnist in 1984 opened a few doors during the bicycle trip… exploring interesting ways people were starting to use personal computers. This interview reveals what were then some novel concepts (and it was an awesome dinner!) by Steven K. Roberts USA Today October 4, 1984 ASPEN, Colo. —…

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This was a bit of a departure from my usual material for the “Computing Across America” column in USA Today, but it was a hot-button issue while I was staying with a Lake City friend on my bicycle trip.  Steven K. Roberts USA Today September 20, 1984 Lake City, Colo. — Environmental issues are seldom…

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The theme of my “Computing Across America” column in USA Today was a bicycle-borne quest to find interesting uses for personal computers, and I was quite fascinated by my first meeting with someone who was very serious about Big Stereo and home control. This is the tale of my visit with Dale Jackson in Baton…

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One of the very best things about wandering around on a gizmological marvel with lots of media coverage is that the machine becomes a key that opens doors of all descriptions. I briefly shared orbits with people I would never have otherwise met, and some such encounters spawned journalistic spin-offs… like this one. Joe Ely…

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Partying Goes Online for Cyclist - USA Today

Boy, does this one ever take me back… to the salad days of the emerging CompuServe culture that congealed around the “CB Simulator.” The quality of discourse was rich then, with a number of effective filters in place (only 140,000 subscribers to this largest of the online services) and considerable self-examination (“What does this mean?…

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After the cover story of July 5, 1984, this was the first of my columns in the Money section of USA Today, which ran every other week until mid-November (when I hunkered down to write Computing Across America). This would have been awesome PR for said book, but I got caught up in editorial musical…

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