Be the Change

A young Steven Roberts with his decked out BEHEMOTH recumbent bicycle!​

Be the Change | Editorial
Journal of the San Juan Islands
San Juan Island, WA - The American dream propels us to supposed prosperity. We go to college for knowledge. We hopefully fall in love and create life. We buy a house we may or may not be able to afford. We pay our loans. We toil and dog paddle against the waves of housing bubbles and crashing economies and the price of long wars. But we are able to be successful if we work hard enough we can be anyone or do anything. Maybe.

There is another option. You can be a pioneer by shedding the skins of what we should be and forge a new path. Steven Robert teaches us a lesson in the story “Floating Micro-ship” on page 1 of this edition.

Roberts describes himself as a “technomad” and has lived in modes of transportation since 1983. For eight years he rolled around the U.S. on a computerized, recumbent bicycle.

It was Roberts’ escape from a 9-to-5 job, 30-year mortgage, and suburbia, which he attributes to a state of mind, not just location. What he wanted was freedom, while maintaining a steady paycheck.

Now he lives in a powerboat equipped with 50,000 pounds of electronics from a piano keyboard to a weather station.

We so often look so hard for solutions, how can we ...


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Wizard With A Time Machine | The Journal of the San Juan Islands Journal of the San Juan Islands

Located in an unassuming building in Friday Harbor is a magical place inhabited by a wizard of technology bringing history back to life for clients and friends. Steven K. Roberts is his name, digitizing old films, videos and slides is his game.

Harbor Digitizing, established in 2018 by Roberts, began as a personal project when he inherited a collection of 8mm movies taken by his father between 1936 through the 1970s. Within the collection, along with footage of his family, surfaced early footage that Roberts recognized had “considerable historical value.”

Roberts spent a considerable amount of time researching an overwhelming range of conversion technology that would suit his needs and technological skills. Following an obsessive amount of research into professional digitizing tools and technologies, according to Roberts, “I realized that the collection was large enough to justify buying my own system,” which ultimately led Roberts to start Harbor Digitization.

As Roberts continued to refine his system, in 2018 he decided to set up shop in Friday Harbor and offer his services to the public. Since that time Roberts has upgraded and added equipment which now allows him to scan and digitize everything from 8mm/Super 8 to 35mm film, slides, negatives, and nearly every video format known to man. “I can handle just about any home movie format,” says Roberts.

The wonder of this is, with his ability to transfer nearly every film and video format Roberts has the ability to scan every frame from old movie film into high-resolution images, converting them to a digital format which can be easily viewed on any computer. Roberts provides clients with thumb-drives that contain priceless images of family, friends, history, and more.

THE ORIGINAL TECHNOMAD
Roberts has an equally interesting history, besides his current role as a film archivist.

Roberts is considered the first Digital Nomad, or “Technomad,” designing and building a bicycle complete with built-in computers and network systems—think today’s cell phone—powered by solar panels, back in 1983. His first design, the Winnebiko, provided Roberts with a human-peddled mobile machine that opened up new horizons for the young inventor.

“What I thought would be a bicycle tour quickly became a career,” says Roberts, “and this dovetailed perfectly with the rise of laptops and online services… which were my essential tools, along with a custom recumbent and solar panels.”

The media fell in love with Robert’s invention, drawing a lot of attention to the inventor and his creation, so he penned a book “Computing Across America” documenting his high-tech escapades across 10,000 miles of the country.

Roberts’ next iteration of his mobile computing device was “Winnebiko II,” built in 1986. According to Roberts “What fun is a computerized bicycle if you can’t write while riding? That was the original design goal for this new version, which also included packet data communications via ham radio. The combination led to the first ‘Texting while driving,’ along with new frontiers in nomadic connectivity that were beginning to render my physical location irrelevant.”

“It was inevitable,” says Roberts, “extrapolating from the first two, I had no choice but to build a geek extravaganza of mobile computing tools.” Behemoth — so named because it was a 580-pound, 105-speed monster — was the culmination of three years of work and was valued at the time at an estimated $1.2 million dollars. The project, completed in 1991, was hosted by SUN Microsystems, and according to Roberts “integrated multiple computers, satellite communications, heads-up display, head mouse, multimode ham station, speech synthesis, cellular, and lots more…”

Behemoth, the world’s first unixcycle, now resides in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California.

“After 8 years of computerized recumbent bicycle adventures,” says Roberts, “it was a bit of a shock to hit the road in 1991 on Behemoth and find myself fantasizing about watercraft. I was pedaling a showcase of gizmological delights that by some estimate was worth $1.2 million… but it was time for a change of venue and I was obsessed with building a ...

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