By looking back to the formal beginning of rheology (1929) and studying more recent offerings at congresses, we see that there is a drift of content in the subject. In the beginning rheology was seen as an extension of classical continuum mechanics, but more recently one has seen the withering of offerings in solids rheology and the start of some new branches of the Subject. Some opinions on possible future directions are given. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.