Roberts tells me he’s in the process of eBaying As a child, he made numerous electronic projects, most of these things. I notice a stack of Macin- which he usually entered into the school science tosh computers. They’re the really old “classic” fair: an induction magnet that could pick up alu-models, the ones with the tiny built-in black- minum, a Morse-code translator, and a speech and-white monitors. The genial Roberts, a tall synthesizer based on his own vocal tract, taken and bearded fellow, says I can take one or more from an X-ray of his head. of them if I’m interested. I politely decline, being He shows me his latest project in his work-one of those people who avoids collecting items shop, a souped-up canoe. Actually, “souped-up” for which I have no use. is an understatement. It’s been totally over-

I’m a little surprised by all of this stuff in his hauled with the addition of two smaller hulls, place. When I first contacted him over the sum- one connected at each side to the main hull mer of 2005, Roberts told me how in 1983, then where the pilot sits. Eight blue solar panels, four 31 years old and living in the suburbs of Columbus, on each side, are set across from the smaller Ohio, in a three-bedroom ranch-style house, he hulls to the main hull. This water vehicle even worked as a freelance writer (reporting on tech- has retractable wheels. Why does a boat need nology and electronics), and felt trapped. wheels? Roberts felt it would be more con- “I was working my ass off to pay for things I venient to move from shore to water if it had didn’t want, a lifestyle I didn’t want. I was doing wheels, so he spent years designing and building things I didn’t enjoy,” he recalled. this elaborate mechanism.

Seeing his workshop, however, I was reminded of This super-modified boat, christened the
an email in which he lamented: “Almost everyone Wordplay, looks more like a starfighter out of a
I know is bogged down by ‘complexity’: Creaky science fiction TV show than something meant
but familiar tools one doesn’t dare replace; new for the water. This analogy isn’t too far off,
toys not yet learned; incompatible power sup- considering the onboard technologies it packs:
plies; unlabeled mystery cables clogging drawers; satellite and cellular phone, ham radio, and
lost documentation; and the vulnerability of it all marine VHF. And this doesn’t even include the
becoming utterly useless.” video cameras and other gizmos that aren’t
Back in 1983, back with all those things he mounted to it the day I visit. There’s a circular,
didn’t want, Roberts yearned for simplicity and triton-looking antenna set toward the craft’s
adventure. He had not planned on it, but he was bow that Roberts explains is an “ultrasonic
about to become a pioneer of the “tech-nomadic” transducer.” Once a second, each of the three
life: a man who used mobile technology to live forks communicates with the other in order to
on the road, to stay in touch with the world collectively measure the surrounding air mass,
wherever he was, and to free himself from a wind speed, and wind direction.
dreary existence. Yet Wordplay travels by decidedly low-tech
means: by wind with a sail.

The Souped-Up Canoe

Roberts became interested in electronics when The Winnebiko he was 8 years old and growing up in Louisville, Roberts shows me around the rest of his

Ky. His father was a mechanical engineer, and cluttered workshop. One item catches my eye;
Roberts was inspired by him to build machines. it looks like a control panel ripped out of a jet
fighter cockpit. It served as the control panel for
his first tech-nomadic vehicle, the Winnebiko.
Back in Columbus, 1983, Roberts went to a
party out in the country. That night, he stared
into a campfire and then things “just all snapped

Roberts’ road warrior box, the Shacktopus contains three transceivers, GPS, wi-fi, environmental telemetry, solar power, speech synthesis, audio recording, Bluetooth, a deployable antenna, and more.

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