textfiles/fun/CAA/gecaa-37

From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan  7 17:35:55 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: chapter-37

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE



#37 in the second online CAA series

by

Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)

Richmond, VA; 14,241 miles.

October 28, 1987



copyright 1987, Steven K. Roberts





     At last we have fled the madness of metropolitan DC.  Looking back, it

seems a marathon -- a sort of delerium like those tangled memories of fevers

past.  For a month we cruised the confusion, working, doing the media dance,

visiting new friends and old... torn between the myriad temptations of

megalopolis and the sweet silence of the countryside.  We visited GEnie, toured

the Solarex plant, and added a new ham radio station; we hunkered over

keyboards various and pounded away on writing projects until the sense of a

season passing became a sort of agony...



     It's getting COLD and WET out there!



     And so, last week, we headed south.  Again on a bike path (this time the

Mount Vernon trail), we lazily cruised along in blissful ignorance of DC

traffic.  The petroleum-gobbling phalanx was but a dull roar to our right, no

more challenging than the jets overhead, the languid Potomac to our left, or

the dank marsh under the wooden bridges that clattered occasionally beneath our

overloaded wheels. Insulated thus from reality, we drifted south until --

abruptly -- the shoulderless nightmare of rush hour Highway 1 reminded us of

all we've been missing during our long DC layover.



     6:00, encroaching dusk.  Our host was yet 20 miles south in Dumfries,

waiting dinner, watching down the lane for the errant cycling strangers who had

called from the blue to announce their arrival.  Frenzied commuters and massive

trucks blasted by, irritated by our presence, kicking up a heavy wake of

hydrocarbon haze to sting our eyes and blur our vision.  The land was folded

like a massive washboard, 3 mph up, 25 down, over and over, over and over in

the cold darkness, hot sweat soaking fabric only to chill our flesh with each

downhill run.  Through it all we pedaled with a sort of panic, wide eyes

searching headlight-dazzled mirrors, muscles taut, teeth clenched... pushing

our exhausted bodies far too hard in the subconscious but entirely rational

need to get this hell over with as soon as possible.



     We survived, barely, and staggered shivering into a spacious house of

wealthy attorneys for a grilled dinner and a fitful sleep of restless dreams.

Then morning, on the road again, just like in the old days -- DC a whole

map-fold away and already sort of... unreal.



     The next night, we found ourselves in Fredericksburg -- in the home of Rus

(CPHILLIPS on GEmail), a bright high-school student and GEnie subscriber who

responded, many months ago, to these random tales.  "You know he's only 17,"

his mom warned me on the phone, a bit hesitant, not quite sure what to make of

her son's electronic invitation to a couple of sweaty strangers out there on

the highway.



     "That's the beauty of the network," I told her, standing sore- kneed in

the phone booth.  "People can make brain-to-brain contact without being

distracted by each others' physical attributes.  Your son's an interesting

guy."



     "That he is..." she said, and gave me directions to the house. In short

order we were there -- meeting the young computer-wiz and his whole active

family, reminded intensely of the lifestyle sampler that makes this journey

what it is.  In the lingering aromas of a crab 'n chili dinner, still chuckling

at the antics of the twins and the flying squirrels out back, we fell asleep,

hard, out of shape from the month of DC

interviewing/writing/visiting/playing/etcetering.



     And then there's technology.



                                * * *



     There have been quite a few high-tech treats in the last couple of weeks

-- as well as a few of the usual battles with balky hardware (the mere fact

that something is exotic and expensive does not, alas, make it useful).  My

Phil Wood disc brakes continue to hold the record for receiving the most curses

aimed at any piece of hardware on my bike, and the little inclinometer looks

pretty but never budges from the 0-degree mark (the steel ball rusted within a

month).



     But the electronics systems are growing vigorously.  I'm writing now from

Richmond, where our host is the architect of the local packet multi-port BBS

and mail-forwarding network -- a fellow addict of high- tech toys who has had

me drooling over the latest gizmology all week. Seeking the source of RF noise

in the Winnebiko, we rolled a 1.5 gigahertz spectrum analyzer in from the back

room and signal-averaged the trash down to a few key birdies.  When an NMOS ROM

in my bike mysteriously blew on Sunday night, we downloaded a new version from

Motorola and stuffed it immediately into CMOS.  Video is piped throughout the

home; a Rolm computerized phone system keeps everybody in communication.   This

is a glimpse of What Might Have Been Had I Not Been Restless -- a maddeningly

inviting playground of ham radio, computers, tools, toys, widgets, and

entertainment systems... all paid for by his product, the miniature barcode

wand used by Federal Express.  This has been a week of technology transfer:  I

replaced the ghastly C&K buttons on my handlebar keyboard with sleek units from

the Microwand... and Jim is now a GEnie subsriber (welcome J.DEARRAS!).



     His arrival on GEnie opens an exciting new communications path to me.

I've been using packet radio somewhat sparingly since my address keeps changing

(how do you define a "home BBS" when moving all the time?).  Yet packet seems a

perfect technology for the bike -- an ad hoc network, unconstrained by the need

for nodes and phone lines (see the "Online and On the Air" story in the new

"Tools & Technology" submenu of CAA).  I've been playing with packet, of

course, active on the network when in a town for more than a few days but

disappearing into the vapors of Dataspace when on the road.  Packet mail

follows me around for weeks before catching up.



     But now, there's a gateway.  Mail from the ham radio community reaches me

through KA8OVA @ WA4ONG, the PBBS address here in Richmond. Jim's system

notices the address, forwards it to a holding file, then signs on to GEnie in

the middle of the night to send it to WORDY -- in the process checking for mail

from me that needs to cross the other way into packetspace.  The net effect

<heh> is a cusp linking two layers of Dataspace, a phenomenon which, as you

know, has been all too slow in coming.  We need LOTS of them.



     Ham radio has been much on my mind in other forms as well these last few

weeks.  I finally got the HF station working -- based on a little box called

the Ten-Tec Argonaut that shoves a couple of watts out the coax connector on

its back whenever I activate the electronic keyer.  It's only gravity, only

another 15 pound or so...



     It's difficult to express the feeling of prowling the ham radio spectrum

to readers already familiar with networking.  There you are, out there at your

computer, routinely swapping mail with people all over the country and

cognizant of the fact that global communication is not all that exotic.

Satellites float around, joining earth stations and a host of large computers

to form a stable substrate for reliable datacomm.  It only costs five bucks an

hour to hobnob on GEnie -- and only rarely is there even a glitch in the

dataflow.



     But try to imagine a signal about as powerful as a miniature

Christmas-tree bulb, generated from captured sunlight and shoved into a wire

hanging in the trees.  It makes a standing wave out there (through some

mysterious process), propagates rapidly into space, hits the ionosphere and

bounces back to earth a time or two, then causes a few millionths of a volt to

appear in a similar piece of wire... in Germany.  A stranger's ears perk up; he

touches a key to call my name; then through a symmetrical process I hear

distant beeps, dredged out of the static by a box of stuff mined from the

earth.  I tell you, this is magic... no matter WHAT the engineers say!



     It's also a hell of a lot of fun.  It was a thrill to sit outside at

midnight, breathing porchlit vapor in Arlington, Virginia, chatting Morsewise

with a guy named Greg in Armour, South Dakota.  It was even fun to beep back to

Columbus -- for there's something deliciously adventurous in cruising the

spectrum for action, watching for soft signals in the noise that are every bit

as tempting, in their own way, as those mysterious special smiles in the

singles bars of yesteryear. This cannot be compared to computer networking --

or even to the digital anarchy of packet radio (which sacrificed mystery for

the sake of reliability).  Packet is a marriage of magic and efficiency...

DXing is a wild flirtation with a whole spectrum of unknowns, an endless quest

for someone a little bit farther out or a little bit hotter than your last

contact...



     And as the sexual revolution dies in the stranglehold of AIDS hysteria,

the radio world explodes with new possibilities -- for the sunspots are coming

back!  Too bad most hams are male...



                                * * *



     Before leaving northern Virginia, we made one last foray into Maryland --

to Rockville.  GEnie hosted a press event in our honor, even providing a police

escort through the busier parts of town.  I offered the cop a full-time job

following us around the country with his blue lights a-flashing, for the sense

of protection from traffic was an unfamiliar delight.  But he declined,

expressing doubt that he could make off with the car.



     My existing impression of GEnie as a healthy company was reinforced by the

visit.  Unlike the competition, this is not a stuffy corporate culture (even if

it IS a part of a big company).  Security in the building is tight, but behind

all that people are friendly and playful, happily taking the time to gather in

the parking lot with balloons and cameras to enjoy a morning of socializing.

ESPN covered the event, which aired on "Nation's Business Today" on the morning

of the 14th.



     We also visited Solarex, where the bike's rear photovoltaic module

mysteriously put out 770 mA for the first time ever (about 10% over my previous

record).  "So THAT'S why you located in Rockville," I observed.  "The sun does

something special here."  Turned out there was more than one sun that day -- a

ring of bright clouds was acting as a giant lens.  Duly inspired, we pedaled up

to Frederick to see the "breeder," an impressive facility with one of the

world's largest PV arrays -- a place that turns incoming rock into wondrous

devices for making power out of thin air.  Why this still hasn't caught on with

the general public, I don't know... but it produces free energy with no

overhead or safety problems.  We upgraded to the latest models and pedaled

toward the sun.



     And so I'm writing this on our last night in Richmond.  It has been a week

of work:  of online searching and writing for clients, writing proposals, doing

bike surgery, building a new friendship, and catching up with the endless flow

of information.  How people keep up, I'll never know.  One new project:  online

in the CAA area about now is a new series of articles -- a biweekly column I'm

writing for Computer Currents about the technology that makes this adventure

work. If you're interested in the infrastructure of the Computing Across

America Traveling Circuits, check it out.



     South, now -- hopefully to land somewhere warm before winter! Cheers from

the road...



          -- Steve