Of Journals and Eternity

The journal whose 100^th issue we celebrate here has little in common with what it was when we launched issue “numéro zéro” in 1971. Not only because its editors, format, contributors and themes have changed, as could be expected in a publication now more than 30 years old. But the main difference lies in the technological and ontological subversions it has lived through and whose impacts have changed the world as we knew it.

Journals are born to die, and so they did before the advent of the Internet. Journals are now forever. Where they were intended for quick consumption and almost instant obsolescence, they have now achieved a form of eternal after-life. Many journals are now available on-line, and in strictly electronic form, and this is what we can expect to happen to most of them in the coming years, including older ones. Digitizing them will make forever present what was meant to disappear.