I know it’s a topic I come back to now and again, but only because it is one of the most useful “technologies” to come out of my WorldWideWeb experience. The ability to essentially bookmark something of interest and then have that thing tell you when something happens to it is a remarkable way to increase the number of things one can juggle. Layering audio and video files on top of the RSS framework gives us pod/vid casting. This has also reshaped the way I consume media to a huge extent.
Not having to search out content, but to let it tell you when there is something to consume frees up more time for consumption. I used to read blogs by clicking through all of my bookmarks, reading to remember where I last left off, and then reading onward until I’d consumed all the new postings. I could waste hours a day doing this and not really gain a whole lot of new information. I don’t think I’ve clicked on a blog bookmark in years now. I just follow links from my RSS reader.
Podcasting has made my life as a commuter so much more enjoyable. I currently timeshift about 15 radio shows from four continents on a variety of subjects. I no longer chafe under the constraints of what limited variety the local over-the-air radio provides. Podcasting also provides a platform for niche programming. You’d never get a weekly half-hour program featuring mashups that pull from classical, martial, and pop music on any corporate run radio station. I have two of these in my queue and when the mood strikes on a given drive, I can groove away.
Historically I’ve always subscribed to feeds for the long haul. A website I enjoy has a feed? Subscribe! I never did much pruning because I liked what they had to offer over time. There are some that changed in tone (or maybe I’ve changed a bit too) and I’ve deleted them. Some blogs are no longer active, much to my great disappointment. The subscribe/delete process tended to keep things at a pretty even level with my ability to keep up.
Lately, as in maybe the past six months or so, I’ve been using RSS a bit differently. Google provides a number of interesting ways to combine its search algorithms with the technology and it is easy enough to set up a feed and get news of a particular subject without having to go looking for it. For example, when Google comes across news matching the filter “Council Bluffs levee” I get a notice and link to the article. I’m following three general news stories this way. Google + RSS has become my own private clipping service.
Most online newspapers and discussion forums now allow you to subscribe to feeds on comment threads for news stories. This lets me track a discussion on the latest outrage to hit Metafilter, chuckle over the frothing masses huddled over the latest local crime sensation, keep up on discussions about the various ham radios I own, etc etc etc.
All of this flows through my email/RSS reader. The Web is clamoring at my doorstep, providing endless opportunities to wallow in a glut of signal (and noise) surrounding something that interests me. It is Vannevar Bush’s Memex realized. Using my reader’s indexing and searching functions, I can retrieve details and discussion history at levels that continually amaze.
The problem, and there’s always a problem, is that my reader/email client is becoming unwieldy. There are so many feeds I’ve subscribed to in the past half year that no longer bear fruit and should be pruned. The size on my filesystem of this vast amount of text and audio is starting to strain my ability to capture and properly manage backups for. I dread migration my primary platform so much that I have a hard time envisioning not using my current laptop for the rest of my life.
Still, there’s no way I’m going back. You can pry my collection of feeds from my cold, dead fingers. Something so simple as a standardized, machine-readable, XML format has enabled us to unleash the scouring power of software agents on the monstrosity that is the WorldWideWeb. This is the kind of thing that gave me shivers when playing with the building blocks in grad school. It’s almost AI, but it’s most like Memex…and we’re really only beginning here.
Looking forward, RSS-like applications are being bundled into the next generation of browsers. Visit a web site with a feed and the browser can remember the state of the site when you visit. Come back and it will jump to the place where you last were, or maybe even filter out the old and only show you the new, or maybe just highlight new content. Or maybe do all three and allow you the option to pick how you want it to behave. The money-making future of the Web is in aggregation + digestion + presentation + personalization + connecting similar datasets/profiles/people. Do this seamlessly and people will pay–either those who want this level of service or those who want to harvest the audiences these silos present.