Steve Roberts: Computing Across America

I sent Steve a fan email, and to my wonder, received a reply back. He struck me as a lovely guy, happy to correspond about the music and his general state of mind.

My memory is that an attraction of his column was that each was written from a different place, and described the adventures getting there, and being there. But then he got to the Florida Keys. And hung out at the Florida Keys for another column. And then hung out there for another column or so -- it was a pretty great place. And eventually, CompuServe dropped the column.

So nice to read the article on Steve Roberts, and fill out a bit these memories. Perhaps somewhere out there, someone has also written a memoir about CompuServe in its pre-Internet 1980s glory?

Oh, and I kept the copy of Mondo 2000 where there was an article about him because the combination of him riding that crazy computer-laded bike and the whole Mondo 2000 aesthetic made me think something special was happening. The particular issue had this plus Richard Stallman, Brian Eno, Timothy Leary and William Burroughs. And Joichi Ito.

The pictures in the catalog entry were taken in a warehouse. The bike is displayed much more nicely than these show.

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/L2003.20...

Here's a link to issue 1 from December 9, 1990:

https://microship.com/behemoth-bikelab-security-dipole/

And his intro announcement that I saved, and of course I subscribed to his fascinating Nomandness mailing list -- such fun times:

In article <65315@newstop.EBay.Sun.COM>, Dec 6, 1990, wordy@Corp (Steven K. Roberts) writes:

Hi...

Are you interested in ongoing reports from the bikelab here at Sun? I am working around-the-clock on BEHEMOTH (the successor to the 16,000-mile-old Winnebiko), a 350-pound recumbent bicycle with satellite earth station, GPS satnav, handlebar keyboard with thumb mouse, ultrasonic head mouse, SPARC IPC for CAD and mapping and file-serving, Hypertalk user interface to the trio of FORTH real-time systems, heads-up display on the PC LAN, biketop publishing environment, complete ham radio station, micro ecurity sensors, 54 speeds, regenerative and hydraulic braking, refrigeration and active helmet cooling system, speech synthesis and recognition, audio crosspoint network, MIDI, CDROM drive, 82 watts of solar panels, amateur television station, portable R&D lab, RF packet data link between manpack and bike, stereo, extensive camping gear, and so on.

Sun has become a major sponsor, providing workspace and facilities here on the Mt. View campus, and my job is to disseminate diverse information on bizarre human interfaces, portability, packaging, wireless networking, and the underlying nomadness that has kept the whole project alive for 7 years.

To facilitate publication of technical reports on the project, I have started an alias called Nomadness. If you'd like to receive ongoing updates, subscribe by sending a note to:

nomadness-request@bikelab.Corp

Thanks, and cheers from the unixycle lab!

Steve Roberts N4RVE x65037