New Year’s Day, 1983, saw me making what I described in the book as a death-defying plunge into Miami… I was afraid of the city, but it turned out to be friendly and welcoming, with lots of pleasant on-the-road encounters. One guy stopped me on the road and handed me a copy of this article…

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This was Christmas Day, and I was making the trek south to Key West to meet a network friend in what came to be known as “the ultimate blind date.” I was fortunate to have old friends in Titusville, and it was sweet to spend the holiday in their company before returning to the madness…

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Computing Across America, Chapter 17 by Steven K. Roberts Gainesville, Florida December 23, 1983 The wanderer’s danger is to find comfort.— William Least Heat Moon, in Blue Highways Fevers, in a twisted way, are kind of fun. This one was: I lay without responsibility, making irrational comments and easing open an aching eyelid now and…

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During this first long southbound leg of the journey, enroute to the Keys, I stopped in Gainesville to meet part of my newly discovered biological family (I was adopted, and found my birth parents a year or so earlier). I ended up staying around town for a week or so, then returning a few weeks…

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Computing Across America, Chapter 16 by Steven K. Roberts Gainesville, Florida December 15, 1983 A variety of nothing is superior to a monotony of something.— Jean Paul Richter There it was at last: Florida. I could see the green sign far ahead on the last long stretch of Highway 17 in Georgia, and steeled myself…

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In 2020, a marvelous 37-year-old file turned up in my archives… the record of what, in 1983, was a rare phenomenon. A romance was developing in the ether of CompuServe, and while pedaling down the East Coast I was falling for a wonderful online information consultant in Berkeley. This is common now, so much so…

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This article in the home-town paper, written while I was heading down the Georgia coast, was written at a time when most people didn’t have any idea about computer networking…  by Janet A. Pearl Columbus Dispatch December 5, 1983 Steven K. Roberts has thrown off the shackles of an office job without losing a paycheck.…

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This article, written about 2 weeks before my initial departure from Columbus, takes a different tack than most… it’s a little skeptical, and questions the nuts-and-bolts of both systems and business model. I find that refreshing, as it introduces a few details that escape the rhapsodic journalistic approach that was more common. At the time…

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This article holds a sort of strange distinction in my memory… it was the first one I wrote while fully nomadic on my computerized recumbent bicycle, just a few days after leaving Columbus at the end of September 1983. Of course, I was also posting online about the trip itself and doing a series in…

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Computing Across America, Chapter 15 by Steven K. Roberts Brunswick, Georgia December 1, 1983 A guest sticks a nail in the wall even if he stays but one night.— Polish proverb I did not expect to find magic in Brunswick, Georgia. I wouldn’t have been surprised by love, lavish southern hospitality, or even a pocket of…

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