In my ever increasing utilisation of RSS subscriptions, it's been dawning on me over the past couple of months that Gen X, Y & Millennial’s who’ve taken strongly to using RSS aggregators for their daily news fix has a very detrimental effect on today’s society!
The rationale for my reasoning follows this line of thought: An individual who uses an aggregation service (such as Google Reader) subscribes to RSS feeds he‘s interested in. Those feeds are amalgamations of other individuals’ thoughts that are of interest to that subscriber. This therefore leads to an individual gaining knowledge in an ever increasing very narrow perception of society, based mostly around his ideals.
In the past a person bought a newspaper, which comprised of a varied cross section of current news. The subscriber would therefore glean information from a wide knowledge base, irrespective of his current interests. Skimming a paper raised awareness of the social structures irrespective of his immediate interests. An individual could then converse with a wider variety of people, due to his greater current news knowledge
Are we therefore creating groups of people who live in their own online communities, building an ever higher wall around their communities with a future fear that they won’t be able to converse with others of differing belief structures…..
Food for thought, am I being too alarmist here! Interested in your comments…..
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4 comments:
When I read your post I remembered a quote from A.J. Liebling: "People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news." The same is valid for things people read on blogs, wikipedia, RSS feeds, web pages and in newsletters. They forget that this is only someone's opinion. Wikipedia is a prime example for this: It is meanwhile used as a dictionary everywhere! But people often do not know that it is written by people like you and me! Well, at least if we would have the time!
So yes, I think you are right there! RSS feeds create a subgroup of people who believe they are informed but in reality only take other people's opinion!
But on the other side reading RSS feeds (and I read a lot) widens my horizon! It gives me the chance to exchange knowledge and opinion with - well for example with you! And it is this exchange which I like about RSS.
Cheers
Peter
Interesting perspective. And I think you are right as far as RSS goes. Its a lovely tool for helping with the signal-to-noise ratio, and helps one tune into the domains of most personal meaning, at the cost as you point out, to the "noise" that is also important.
I still consume most of my "news" via RSS reader, but recently 2 things have somewhat changed my information consumption patterns.
First of all I recently purchased an iphone & together with its wonderful browser & the increase in mobile-friendly websites (eg. the NZ Herald) I am now also consuming more "noise".
Secondly I am currently having an experiment with Twitter & finding that its unique cross between social networking & micro-blogging provides a regular input of random information that I might not have otherwise come across.
The way people consume "news" is going to increasingly be driven by convenience, accessibility and relevance via personal filtering & the social graph. Only last night I was thinking that what RSS is missing is a social dimension. Maybe in your pondering you have discovered an as-yet unconceived product that is tomorrow's killer app.
There is a persuasive logic to your argument. I wonder whether it takes sufficient account of people's curiosity and the desire of many people to be intellectually stimulated and challenged? Some people are surely not going to rely exclusively on RSS for knowing what is happening in the world or what thought leaders think. They/we will find and enjoy other ways to have our prejudices challenged.
Interesting thought, and it is true, in general. However, a person's life is constantly changing (especially now - it is changing more quickly than in the past), and their RSS feeds change accordingly. I think that, as our world is becoming more dynamic, the range of our RSS feeds will only broaden.
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