A personal view

In the 20 years from its first issue, BIT has been active in an area of technology with fast and thorough changes. After scanning through 20 volumes, I am surprised to detect that the published scope of BIT has remained almost unchanged, and many statements in the first editorial could be published today without replacing a single word. BIT did not give up its basic principles published in the first issue, e.g. the 'intention to show that academic rigour need not be sacrificed in order to achieve relevance and practicality' although in the two decades of its life span not only one of the biggest empires of all time collapsed but also an unprecedented change in technology was to be witnessed. The makers of BIT, i.e. its editors, authors and referees, did not limit their role to witnessing the change passively. The papers of the past 20 years focused on applications and their usability rather than on treating issues related to bits and bytes (technical technologies) or discussing social issues related to technology. For the next 20 years, we may try to deal also with more practical issues arising from the emergence of electronic media fully emancipated from paper. It took about 20 000 years to develop graphic art and 500 to cultivate typographywhy not help to establish the art and technology of electronic communication in a much shorter time?