InfoWorld began as information technology took off Call it foresight. Call it business savvy. Or call it just plain dumb luck. But when InfoWorld launched in December 1978, the magazine was in the right place at the right time. Initially a black-and-white tabloid with an academic moniker (until February 18, 1980, the name was Intelligent Machines Journal), InfoWorld bore witness to the most accelerated tech ramp-up in history. The quarter century heralded the birth of the personal computer, enterprise computing, client server, the Internet boom, and yes, even hints of those eponymous intelligent machines. For this retrospective, we sneak a backward glance at what information technology has wrought, and gaze forward to speculate where IT is heading. If the next 25 years resemble the previous 25, even our wildest predictions will seem tame. Technology Industry