Articles by SKR Archives - Page 6 of 13

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…

A visceral, intense day of bicycle touring… this was first written on November 29, 1986 as Chapter 14 of my Miles with Maggie series. by Steven K. Roberts Cyclist Magazine February, 1987 Do you ever read published tales of long-distance touring and wonder what it really feels like to be out there, exposed to the…

Part of my series in Computer Currents during the Winnebiko II epoch, this celebrates the magic of packet radio… data communications on the ham bands while mobile. This technology was an early hint of what we now take for granted, with a computer in every pocket! In those days, exchanging messages with others required a deep…

by Steven K. Roberts Computer Currents July 5, 1987 (published July 29, 1987) It was 1983 in a place that inspires long-distance travel… Columbus, Ohio. “The Idea” was but a week old: I would spend the next six months trashing my suburban lifestyle, building an electronic cottage on wheels, and restructuring my freelance business to allow…

This was the first piece in my Computer Currents column, and I loved it… the readership was at a perfect level for my tales of radical new technomadic tools, and I could write without translating. I invited readers to get in touch directly through a variety of email pipes (see closing paragraph), and hundreds did……

by Steven K. Roberts Computer Currents written June 4, 1987 published July 14, 1987 Rolling down the road… it’s a universal dream. At some level, we all ache to escape the tyranny of the desk and sample the exotica, touch the unknown, bask in the indolent rays of the endless summer afternoon that seems, in the…

This is an unusual item, as it is under my byline. Usually I wrote for magazines, and the newspaper stories were by reporters. The excellent photos are by Janis Miglavs, taken in an Oregon coastal town in late 1986 while Maggie and I were pedaling down the west coast. The opening shot appears more sharply…

This has always been one of my favorite articles… it was an honor to publish in Whole Earth Review, produced by those brilliant folks in Sausalito who have brought us Whole Earth Catalogs and other treasures since 1968. The magazine ran from 1985-2002, and every issue was packed with ideas for self-sufficiency, new tools, and…

One of my fondest memories from the Winnebiko II epoch, traveling both US coasts with Maggie, was our time spent in Humboldt County… hanging out with a group of loony artists obsessed with the Kinetic Sculpture Race. In this little article for Northcoast View (published from 1982-1989), I report on their invention of tricycle polo,…

During the development of the Winnebiko II and onward through my return to the road, I resumed my consulting relationship with the Anatec division of Atlantic-Richfield. The company produced industrial process-control systems, and I had written much of their marketing literature along with engineering manuals. This article was unusual in that it was ghost-written for…

Articles by SKR

Modem Up, Move ’em Out – Computer Currents

A Life on the Road – Cyclist

Packet Radio on the Winnebiko II

The Portable Choice

High-Tech Nomad

Dataspace – The Essence of Disconnection

Work Station on Wheels – Sacramento Bee

Electronic Cottage on Wheels – Whole Earth Review

Trollo – Kinetic Sculpture Artists Invent Tricycle Polo

Future of Distributed Control