Magazines, like most businesses, must keep track of the march of technology. New kinds of machines are constantly being invented, and TIME must determine what and when to buy. In making those decisions, we ask not only how the new equipment will make journalists' work easier and more efficient but also how it will visibly improve the magazine delivered to our readers.
Computers have been part of our lives here for more than two decades. But the machines represented different generations and were not always able, as computer lingo puts it, to talk to one another. In 1987 editorial operations director...