The editor in chief, J. van Gijn, has retired. His main emphasis on the generalist capacities of the physician and on meticulous anamnesis and thorough physical examination is as relevant as ever. However a new challenge is unfolding: how to serve the modern physician who was brought up with digital information and the Internet revolution, with relevant, independent, and objective medical information. The web presence of this journal (www.ntvg.nl) will be brought up to the level of the demanding modern physician. This will include the possibilities of e-learning, podcasts and web videos. The British mathematician and physicist Sir Roger Penrose argues in his book The emperor's new mind: concerning computers, minds, and the laws of physics that the human spirit will never be equalled or replaced by a computer. If he is right--which he probably is--the plans of the new editors should not be seen as a foreseeable algorithmic reaction to the digitalising world, but as a genuinely new perspective.