Somewhere in the late 80s, our department computer committee placed a used IBM PC in my office, presumably to get me up to speed. I resented it. It sat there unused for 5 or 6 years. In the meantime, I purchased a newer used mid-80s IBM-clone (with printer and hard drive) from a friend and set up a home office. I did all my word processing there. I gradually learned to appreciate the machine.

            Along about 1995, my old unused office IBM was replaced with a Power Macintosh 7100/80. Our entire campus was getting wired. I looked at my new device with apprehension. After a few days I tentatively turned it on and started fiddling. Before long I was playing games, sending e-mail, using the word processor and surfing the net. A number of our computer-savy faculty were talking about the "information age," but it didn't really register. I was diddling around with my office Mac, but I didn't have much feeling for the capabilities of the machine or the internet.

            Then one summer night in 1998, I was watching C-SPAN re-runs. A young fellow wearing a 30s-style hat was fielding questions. He seemed like a reasonable person and it made for fascinating listening. I was to find out that this was a National Press Club Meeting and the speaker was Matt Drudge, proprietor of the infamous Drudge Report.Of course, being a news junkie, I was aware that Mr. Drudge was responsible for breaking the Monica Lewinsky story, among others.

            I was startled! I understood the Drudge Report to be some sort of low-level "Hollywood gossip sheet." I'd presumed that Drudge would be a grizzled veteran reporter laboring away in his declining years. Instead, I was viewing an average-looking early-30s guy who could be a student in one of my classes. Drudge had no training as a reporter. He was working on his own, was unsupported and his operational facilities consisted of a computer (purchased at Circuit City!) in his small Hollywood apartment. Furthermore, The Drudge Report was a free service available to anyone with a modem! Somehow, the whole scenario seemed surrealistic. Here was a bright young man who had managed to break one of the biggest stories of my life and people were questioning his reportage and ways of doing things! Good Grief! Matt Drudge was a news media revolution!

            Out of curiosity, I looked up The Drudge Report. What I found was startling. At the time, Drudge's site was a simple black and white sheet lacking photos and ads. There was nothing fancy about it. Other sites were brightly colored, had fancy graphics and rotating doo-dads. Drudge's site was simple, straight forward and looked like something I might be able to turn out. For the first time I began to comprehend the communications revolution.

            In the next few days I began asking around about web sites and how they were established. Tony Carrasco (one of our technicians) explained that I could obtain public-access space on "rohan" (a campus server) and that my office Mac had Netscape Communicator programming necessary to set up simple sites. I opened an account and began work immediately, albeit awkwardly. Within a couple months, I posted the first primitive version of "The Independent Planetologist." I coined that name because I was a solitary individual, unsupported by any research funding or planetary research organization and beholden to no one. My total facilities consist of a 125-square-feet office and a Mac computer. If you wonder where I got the inspiration, look to Matt Drudge. The site was set up as an outgrowth of my intense interest in planetary geology, an interest in public speaking and  a willingness to share my understanding and expertise on a non-profit basis.