A Look at the Future [Guest editorial]

If predictions about the future were as easy to come by as judgments about the past, the set of papers I organized for this 25th Anniversary issue might well have focused on the next 25 years—particularly since other papers in this issue deal with the corresponding past quartercentury. But predicting the future is always a chancey business, and trying to look 25 years into the future of our fast-moving industry is a long shot indeed. So, sacrificing symmetry for caution, we have focused most of our attention on the nearer term.