25 years of technology proves the journey is its own reward If the shiny-domed gent in the print edition of this column looks vaguely familiar, he should. He’s InfoWorld’s CTO, columnist, and blogger Chad Dickerson as he might appear a quarter century from now.Why did Chad get the instant-aging makeover? One answer is that the rest of us here are jealous because we look older every year whereas Chad just seems to get younger. (Thanks to Art Director Ben Barbante for this Photoshop revenge!) The real reason, though, has to do with the stunning cover package put together by Editor in Chief Steve Fox and his crew to celebrate this publication’s 25th anniversary this publication’s 25th anniversary.Although our December 1978 inaugural issue was a bit dry, and carried the title Intelligent Machines Journal, its timing was fortuitous. InfoWorld has reported on a succession of creative destructions since then, including the minicomputer era, the client/server era, the Internet era, and — today — the wireless, security, Web services, and apps integration era. (And we’ll give a prize to the reader who comes up with a snappier summary of today’s IT.) The publication benefited from many sure hands along the way. Among its prominent alums: Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet; Jonathan Sacks, later general manager of American Online; Michael Miller, now editorial director at our competitor Ziff Davis Media; and two who went on to become prominent venture investors, Stewart Alsop of New Enterprise Associates, and Eric Hippeau of Softbank Capital Partners.Still, I’d put the current InfoWorld team up with the best of them — as evidenced by our two cover stories supervised by Features Executive Editor Eve Epstein and Creative Director Andrew Danish. In the first, veteran tech writer Dan Tynan and Associate Editor Jack McCarthy look back at 25 years of computing. Then columnists Tom Yager, Jon Udell, and Dickerson, along with editor Fox peer at some amazing strides to come.Elsewhere, readers of our print edition in the public and military sectors may find a special demographic supplement following page 38 this week on “Securing the Government Enterprise.” We’re proud of this new section, and would appreciate any suggestions you may have (write to kevin_mckean@infoworld.com) for making the next edition even more useful. Software DevelopmentTechnology Industry