Times Techie Envisions the Future of News

Nick Bilton, an editor in the New York Times research and development lab, doesn't think much of newspaper. In fact, he doesn't even get the Sunday paper delivered to his house.

Thankfully for Bilton and his employer, he's bullish on news. It's just the paper he hates.

"Paper is dying, but it's just a device," Bilton told Wired.com ahead of his talk Tuesday at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in San Jose, California. "Replacing it with pixels is a better experience."

Bilton, a youthful technologist who programs mashups in his free time, is charged with inventing the future for the Gray Lady in an era of troubled times for newspapers. Fewer people are subscribing, classified ads are decamping for the internet and online revenues aren't making up for lost print ads.

But Bilton envisions a world where news is freed from the confines of newsprint and becomes better.

He speaks of smart content, smart sensors, avatars reading the news to you from your television and even interactive newspaper boxes that print out a personalized paper and automagically orders your customary drink at a nearby Starbucks.

That means Bilton is thinking of a world where traditional news stories show up on little mobile screens, laptops, e-book readers and television screens. …