It was the fitting close to the 2008 American Magazine Conference (AMC) in San Francisco: a trip to the Google campus in Mountain View, CA. The venue was a 45-minute bus ride away from downtown and a light year or two from the present.

The event had the tone of an American college homecoming weekend: grizzled past heroes still strutting with pride from their glory days but, in truth, looking a step or two slower than the current crop of students.

The unspoken sub-themes of the AMC had resonated from session to session. Although the specific references may have been different, in broadest terms, the messages were the same: our time has come, and it may be