This story in the American Youth Hostel’s Knapsack magazine caught some of the languid flavor of those first 10,000 miles… before the technology took over as the recurring central theme. I was just discovering the lively community of hostelers, completely orthogonal to the more garish population of tourists that plied me with questions in every…

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I wrote this article at a time of intense discovery… the crazy high-tech bicycle adventure was becoming a self-supporting enterprise, and the emerging toolset was hugely provocative. In 1984, there was much intense discussion about the viability of working at home via computers and network connections; this piece explored the notion that there was no…

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Written while I was on the road, this piece discusses information brokers who leverage their knowledge of Dialog and other database services into consulting work. I had done a bit of that myself (as The Information Institute), but that was a minor sideline compared to writing and preparing for the Computing Across America adventure. I had friends…

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Artificial Intelligence - Online Today - Steven K Roberts - 1

Between 1980 and 1983, before venturing off on a life of technomadics, I had the good fortune to become a sort of cutting-edge dilettante. Every few months, I would jet to an academic conference with a press pass, spend a few days hanging with the gurus of a new microculture, then return with a head…

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My on-the-road column about dealing with personal computers continues with a piece on reality. Photo above is the author at the Multibus base-office machine back in Ohio. by Steven K. Roberts Information Today January, 1984 In this, the second part of our series on microcomputers, I think it would be appropriate to spend some 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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In the before times, not only pre-Google but pre-Internet, our tools for online research were esoteric and expensive. In 1982-83 I was obsessed with this technology, and was not only running a small “information brokerage” business but writing articles about how to put these resources to use (along with emerging issues, like downloading). This piece…

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This article in the premiere issue of Information Today was written while I was near the beginning of my bicycle adventure… I remember it feeling almost abstract as I held forth on matters of machine selection while my own life was focused on ultra-portability. It deals with some of the philosophical issues, and is amusing…

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During the early 1980s, a radical new toolset was exploding on the scene… a sort of paleo-Google that was primitive by modern standards, but was life-changing for those who could adapt and learn to incorporate online information retrieval into their work. I covered this industry for Online Today and a few other magazines, and the…

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At the beginning of this crazy adventure, there was very little media coverage. Although I secretly feared that the trip would be aborted (by knee, bike, or financial problems), I rhapsodized at length, exhausting my friends with impassioned ramblings about beating the freedom-security trade-off and testing the viability of the information society by breaking the…

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