Articles by SKR

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…