IEEE Signal Processing Society's Flagship Magazine [From the Editor]

At a meeting that I attended at a high-tech company in Germany, one of the technology leaders stated “the application of signal processing in the automotive industry has become of great importance to us and will play a major role in future activities of our company.” This is a testimonial that we, the signal processing practitioners, can only agree to and welcome. This statement is a nice compliment, especially since, (and I remember it very well) some years ago, it was so difficult for many of us to convince industrialists to think of signal processing solutions as an alternative to their traditional practices. What made this change possible?