Back in 1994, when the net was still being referred to as 'this global interwebnet superhighway thingy', The Guardian did one of their little specials, publishing a version of what they thought the Guardian would be like in 2004. It wasn't a major thing, just a little extra supplement published on some fancy high-tech paper that purported to show what the personalised newspaper of the future might be like. Of course, like all predictions of the future it turned out to be wrong (unless they're planning to introduce some radical new technology in the next twelve months) and, despite changes in typesetting and layout, newspapers today remain pretty much as they were ten years ago. I may well be the only person who remembers this being printed, though it would be interesting to know if anyone at The Guardian itself remembers and is planning a little feature on it next year to see how accurate their predictions were - not just on the technology, but the stories that were featured within it.

What reminded me of this was walking back from the newsagents yesterday, doing the weekly weightlifting task of carrying back the Sunday papers, realizing that a lot of the weight I was carrying were sections that I would just glance over at best. Personalized newspapers - papers that had just the information you wanted, specially printed for you - were one of those 'it's coming in the future' ideas that never really came about, and still show no signs of happening. Some might say that it's because of the Web, and the availability of newspapers online, that's stopped this from happening. After all, you can create your own newspaper online, drawing from various sources and just get what you want, so why woul you need to go to the newsagents for it?

However, the web doesn't seem to have destroyed traditional newspapers as some of the more excitable commentators and techno-visionaries were claiming a few years ago. There's probably two main reasons for it - first, the reluctance of people to read large amounts on a screen and secondly, you lose the element of surprise you can get reading a regular newspaper. If you're just limiting your search to stories that interest you, and commentators you already like, you don't get to read those stories on things you wouldn't normally read about and things like that. Personalisation means you're cutting yourself off from the unfamiliar, from things that might interest you, but you don't know it yet.

I do have one suggestion for personalisation that might make life interesting, and easier - personalising your Sunday newspaper. I'm pretty sure that everyone has sections in their Sunday papers they don't read - for me, I almost never look at business/money/finance or appointments sections and I rarely find anything interesting in travel supplements either. So, why not let people 'trade' those for sections of other newspapers? I could get an extra sport section instead of business, someone else could train their sport section for more arts, some might even want to ignore the news sections in favour of more lifestyle supplements. Some newspapers are vocally in favour of a free market in everything, so why not lead by example?