Most of us fit the profile of what marketing companies used to call "Early Adapters," back in the day. I know that is true of myself, and just about everyone else I know who now does a serious website.

For example, I met my friend David Hudson, who publishes REWIRED from Berlin, back in 1995. Our meeting was accidental. This guy named Andrew Sullivan, who was and is a partner in a design, development and hosting firm called E-Line Productions, based in San Francisco, had "chosen" us as the new `Zine publishers to appear on his latest project: The San Francisco Bay Guardian BBS.

I would later garner political writing assignments from this connection.

G21 Alumni like Ron Morgan of Bastard Nation, and Robin Miller(author of the popular "Cheap Computing" column), formerly at Netly News and now with Andover News would be gained from this "chance" meeting, as well.

TODAY's TALLY: G21 Loyal Readers vote 3:1 against our doing Monicagate coverage. Do you agree? Disagree? Make your opinion known! This is your Last Chance to express an opinion. On Saturday, in the next edition, another round-up of our Reader Response will be published! Should G21 begin Monicagate coverage? Send us your opinions by taking part in our Reader Poll.

It's obvious why Sullivan chose David. David has always been a darling of digerati, and always taken the high road of 'Net criticism, and criticism of 'Net criticism(an obtuse idea if I have ever seen one.) Now REWIRED is not just the website, it is also the book.

But, to this day, I have no idea why Andrew chose me. Other than having been part of the WELL(Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) community for slightly over a year at that point, I was not an obvious choice for his communitarian vision of what the Guardian BBS could be. Though many of my readers lived with the illusion that I was some Gen-X radical(possibly even -- gasp! -- an anarchist,) I was already approaching middle age.

And for all the cache the WELL had gained, for being the main source for information from inside Russian(a year earlier) when Yeltsin was proclaiming democracy from the Russian White House, anybody with half-a-brain could clearly see that the aging hippies who assembled there where sorely unequipped to adapt to The Next Big Thing, this World Wide Web. The Holier-Than-Thou attitude that was already obtaining on the WELL was part of its downfall, and led to dissident movements(and actual alternative communities) like The River. (Forgive the brief 'Net history lesson.)

I was a bomb-thrower publishing an anti-corporate 'Zine exclusively in hard-copy. My focus was, and some people would claim still is, the average working Joe and Jane. My motto, then and now was, "Satire and Commentary for Those Who Ultimately Pay." By that I mean the Working Class.

My only connection to the online world was that I was also --- strange part of my resume, I'll admit --- trying to get inner-city kids, and mostly immigrant kids, excited about the 'Net.

I had just "hooked up" with these grad' students out at Dartmouth College who were producing an edgy web magazine called NRV8, for which I would shortly be writing weekly rants. Reading some of my own material on nrv8 today, I'm aghast. No way I would let *any* writer at the G21 get away with this stuff. We are a responsible "enterprise" with advertisers, after all. (Don't tell the writers!)

Remember, this was 1995-1996(almost a decade ago in web-years): if you did not write rants, you did not get noticed.

And then, on 11 March, 1996, I launched this site.

Now, a web-decade later, I'm publishing and editing the work of other itinerant web writers.... Meanwhile, besides my "Net Publishing" column at Suite 101, I am about to embark on regular columns for two other web publications(besides this one, yes!) on web design and information technology, respectively.