With RSS/Google Reader one can do some serious continuous reading and do it with absolutely minimal effort. Instead of going out into the cold world of the internet and hunting down a blog, that blog now can come into the comfort of our very own home page. And we can read multiple blogs while on one web page, never having to venture out to another page.
It's like instead of going out to the store and buying Time, Newsweek, Christian Science Monitor, these magazines are all delivered to your house as one book. You just have to turn the pages. It's so easy.
I do see some negatives with the RSS/Google Reader.
1. I just can't help feeling that RSS/Google Reader is helping us evolve toward being an even lazier species. We used to have to expend serious energy searching the internet for all the blogs we wanted to read. Now they are all at our doorstep. It makes things too easy for us.
2. With a reader you can't see each individual webpage. You don't get to see the overall presentation of it, thus the character of the person behind it. You just get words. It's like the old record albums had the character of the band you were listening to. Now you just have music on an ipod that you never get to "hold"in your hands.
3. Now there is more and more stuff to read. Blog information overload.
HOWEVER. I must say as I came to my home page today, I have to admit it was very nice just to scroll down and look at all of the updates to the blogs I have subscriptions to.
I guess I have mixed feelings about it. I'll just have to read up on it some more.
I disagree with your first point. You can't make things too easy for me. However, I do agree with your second point. Readers strip away all the surrounding info from a blog post. That is sad in some cases, but non-ASH blogs commonly have ads that I am all to happy not to see. What I normally do is skim stuff in a reader and then click on the interesting ones to take me to the actual blog. This might be something for you to try.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of making my life easier. Just because I get a feed by way of RSS does not mean that I cannot go to the original source. As a matter I fact I think I research more when something teases my interest.
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