The following wins the "missed opportunity" prize.

Jack Driscoll, the Editor-in-Residence of MIT's Media Lab, told me that during the 90s several big-name newspapers were part of a "News In The Future" consortium along with MIT.

Driscoll remembers it as a "pretty lusty group." Gannett was at the table, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle. The goal of the consortium was to support future innovation - to prepare the industry for the very moment we are in. But economic pressures and what Driscoll calls "complacency" changed the group's focus.

NiF morphed into a group called "Organizing Ideas" and then into one called "Simplicity." It's possible that another publisher group like News In The Future might emerge again, says Driscoll. "It kind of depends on sponsor needs."

But it was during the existence of the NiF group that MIT researchers developed the technology for E-ink. The idea, unfortunately, seemed "too far off" for newspapers so we went back to what we knew - ink on paper.

Today, Sony offers a Portable Reader System that "boasts the world's first consumer application of Electronic ink...that delivers a realistic print look that rivals traditional paper," according to Global Traveler magazine. For $350, you can read high-resolution print and graphics on a device the size of a paperback book.

Where would newspapers be today if we'd stayed the course?

At the time, Driscoll says, newspapers were in the mode of buying technological know-how and were content to wait until technology was created.

"Newspapers aren't innovators," Driscoll says. "If it does work, we'll just buy it. They let the opportunity slip."

Driscoll came to his job at MIT through the Boston Globe. The paper was one of the consortium sponsors. He was editor when The New York Times bought the Globe and is candid about the aftermath. "It was clear the Globe was going to be managed by a bookkeeper in New York," Driscoll says. "The quality of their own product remains, but not necessarily their holdings."

The Media Lab offered him a full-time job in 1995 after years of helping MIT students write their thesis papers. He now does community outreach and education on behalf of the lab and writes three blogs: one for sponsors, one for Media Lab staff and faculty, and one for the faculty of both MIT and Cal-Tech, who together are researching election reform issues. The blogs aggregate the best work of thinkers and researchers on various issues.

Driscoll was also an early adopter of citizen media. In 1996 he helped create the SilverStringers, a group of mostly senior citizens who write for the Melrose Mirror, an online magazine. The Media Lab partners with the Melrose group, which has become a sounding board for various projects. Researchers and students frequently visit, present their projects and, according to Driscoll, "get unadulterated feedback."

Driscoll also went on to help develop Rye Reflections, another online site based in Rye, N.H.

Recently, Driscoll teamed up with Media Lab composer Tod Machover (see previous post) on a "hyperscore" project for seriously ill hospital patients. Through computer technology, patients are able to draw lines on a computer screen which are then converted to music. At the culmination of the project, a symphony played several of the patients' musical scores.

Machover has taken the theory of 'healing music' another step, Driscoll says. Yes, music heals, but if you make music yourself it can be more healing to you.

I asked Driscoll and researcher Barbara Barry (see previous post) about the future of traditional newspapers. They both said that papers are part of a continuum - from Revolutionary War pamphleteers to the home-delivered papers we know today.

"I wouldn't be in favor of preserving papers just to preserve them," says Barry. But the need to be informed isn't going to go away. It'll be more important."

Barry cautions that "media inventions" like RSS feeds and multimedia video and audio technology aren't necessarily the answer to improving newspapers or replacing them. She's also not sure we're quite yet at the point of being an Internet Nation. There IS a cult (her word) of content creation going on - podcasters, bloggers - but she doesn't know how widespread the culture really is, or if they're just serving their own interests. For the majority then, papers are still a vital source of information and we still have an opportunity to improve our service and delivery.

Interest in technology IS curving up, Barry says, but will it "create community" in the way papers have traditionally inspired civic engagement? She doesn't know. Predicting beyond 20 years, Driscoll says, is inexact.