FEAT URE
Technomad Remote working to fuel your travels Text by James Pham
While technology has come a long way in the last 30 years making the “electronic cottage” Roberts talked about increasingly more comfortable (Roberts typed in binary with four buttons on his handlebar keyboard and needed pay phones to download files), the motivation to free one’s self from a physical desk remains the same. “My reality had become one of performing decreasingly interesting tasks for the sole purpose of paying bills, supporting a lifestyle I didn’t like in a house I didn’t like in a city I didn’t like. I had forgotten how to play. Could it still be possible to construct a lifestyle entirely of passions, or was losing the spark a sadly inevitable part of growing up?” wondered Roberts. One afternoon, Roberts made a list of all his passions ― writing, adventure, computer
design, cycling, romance, learning and networking ― and set about trying to find a way to combine them all into a life of fulltime travel. In the decades that followed, technological advances such as Wi-Fi, Skype, Elance (an online service for finding and hiring freelancers from around the world), PayPal (a speedy way to pay anyone anywhere with a bank account and an email address), and the decrease in laptop prices as well as changing attitudes towards working from home, made it easier for people to become location independent. In fact, statistics from 2012 show that while 3.3 million Americans (not including the self-employed or unpaid volunteers) considered home their primary place of work, representing a growth of nearly 80 percent
IMAGE by MICROSHIP
It all started on September 28, 1983 when 30-year-old freelance writer/consultant Steven Roberts got on his computerized 8-foot long recumbent bicycle that would eventually see him riding 17,000 miles around the US while working as if from an office. The term “technomad” was born. Armed with a Radio Shack Model 100 laptop, a CompuServe account, solar panels and assorted camping gear (all weighing in at 135 lbs), Roberts explained his mission: “The whole trip offers an opportunity to test the viability of the information society. I want to see if I can maintain a heavily interactive, information-oriented professional practice involving a lot of clients, with an absolute minimum amount of paper — and complete freedom from the confines of an office. I’ll exist in a totally asynchronous fashion.”
Steven Roberts 22