First and most obvious, it's likely that print publishing will have been supplanted by various permutations of online publishing. Printed periodicals, it seems, were largely a phenomenon of the 20th century, as David Leishman says in his forthcoming book, Covering America: A History of the American Century in Magazine First Issues (http://workingmac.com/firstissues/). Soon in this century, people will likely get their news from a high-resolution, broadband-ready portable display that can be rolled up or neatly folded. Currently, the portability, precision, appearance and overall acceptance of print outweigh the burdensome costs to deliver hard-copy publications to readers. But once anyone can sit on a beach and read an online version of Vanity Fair, a reasonably common holiday activity in 2026, there won't be a need to celebrate a printing event such as the one we note here.
The second, but less obvious reason that you won't be reading a copy of the 3,000th issue of Computerworld is that your job won't exist any longer. At least, not as you understand it today. I'm betting that in 20 years, companies and individuals will be subscribing to services for most of their IT needs. People will have numerous kinds of displays -- wall-mounted, built-in counters and desks, handheld, rollable, whatever -- to access what they need and want. Corporate IT will shift away from being the architect, implementer and manager of specialized information technology and services for business. Instead, the next-generation information mavens will specialize in mapping and matching business needs to available online services.
It will require information sources that understand your changed needs. And the 3,000th issue of Computerworld won't be one of them.
Oh, you'll still be reading Computerworld.com or some other Computerworld-brand medium, maybe even on the beach. However, the news, analysis, opinion and in-depth features will be dramatically different, because the information needs of business IT leaders will have changed. The content will be almost unrecognizable from what is in our pages today. And that's good.
Computerworld is wrapping up its fourth decade in print in 2007. But we are not the same Computerworld we were in 1967 or 1977. Nor should we be. In fact, if we were, we would have failed you. For Computerworld to remain relevant, it must and will constantly change with you.
Back when we published our 1,000th issue in 1986, Computerworld readers were steeped in knowledge and skills pertaining to mainframes, minicomputers and, to some extent, PCs in order to deliver largely customized applications to business users. IBM was so dominant that its competitors in those days said, "Big Blue isn't the competition; it's the environment." Between then and now, Computerworld readers helped propel the rise of our current state of ubiquitous, standards-reliant, Internet-based desktop computing. From the glass house to everyone's house in two decades. A remarkable achievement, actually. One that radically changed the way business computing gets done. And to get where we are today, you needed a reliable, timely information source that changed with you. Given that today's issue is No. 2,000, it's safe to say that Computerworld has been able join you and make those shifts over time.
So, while a 3,000th printed edition of Computerworld is unlikely, it is likely that you'll still be reading its stories to glean the best, broadest and most relevant information about computing technology and services for business. See you on the beach.