By Elizabeth Valk Long

Like most TIME correspondents, David S. Jackson is used to being a stranger in a strange land. During six years of reporting in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, he has survived a sandstorm in Sudan, dodged camels in Saudi Arabia and sampled dog soup in Korea. But it was only after he returned to the U.S. that Jackson took up his most exotic post of all.

Since 1992 Jackson has spearheaded our coverage of computers and other high technology, and that makes him TIME's chief correspondent in cyberspace. The job has forced him to navigate a bafflingly complex electronic terrain, familiarize himself with mysterious local customs (or "Netiquette") and master a bizarre language featuring such expressions as "cluster geeking," "Easter egging" and "flame baiting." "In many ways," he says, "it is just like being on foreign assignment."

His latest home base is San Francisco -- conveniently close to Northern California's famed Silicon Valley, where a constellation of companies from Apple Computer to Xerox help create the hardware and software that make journeys into cyberspace possible. But the gravitational center of the computer universe lies a short plane ride to the north, at the Seattle-area headquarters of Microsoft, a place Jackson repeatedly visited to report this week's cover story on the largest software manufacturer and its billionaire chairman Bill Gates. Jackson considers Gates the Henry Ford of the information age, a dominant figure both respected and feared. "The very exuberance and competitiveness that make Bill Gates a target for his enemies," says Jackson, "are also the reasons for his astonishing success."

Joining Jackson as Gates watchers were technology editor Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who wrote this week's story, and assistant editor Joshua Quittner, who contributed the accompanying essay. Together they form a cybersavvy team that has shaped dozens of Time stories on information technology and the computer culture. "I don't know what we'd do without Dave Jackson," says Elmer-DeWitt. "He's our eyes and ears in Silicon Valley."

Those eyes and ears are increasingly focused on the screen of his own Apple PowerBook Duo 250. "Hardly a day goes by that I am not cruising the Internet," says Jackson. In cyberspace, he can travel farther and faster than he ever did as a foreign correspondent.