That past was mere prelude.

As you will find in this special image gallery--"35 people, places and things that will shape the future"-- the next 35 years will take us all immeasurably beyond chips. In a new interdisciplinary future, electronics will meet biology, physics and medicine, and the sparks will really start to fly.

And just as the industry (and our coverage of it) has grown beyond Silicon Valley to Asia and Europe over the years, the marketplace of ideas has expanded as well, to encompass such issues as intellectual property and privacy rights, fair use and open source.

Electronics engineers can no longer content themselves with tending to the cozy business of circuit design. The same goes for EE Times. We are witnessing the integration of technology with society--industry and commerce, private life and even politics--to an unprecedented degree.

In this special report and gallery, we offer a glimpse of the next 35 years--what's coming down the pike, and how we might begin to make sense of it. As an extra added attraction, we took a look back, too, at a report we did about 10 years ago: "40 forces that will shape the semiconductor industry." In "Ten Years After: Hits and Misses," we revisit some of those predictions to see how we did. As would be expected, we hit some and missed some. Enjoy.