More Fans of the Text-Driven Internet

I remain hopeful that a second, less image-y, less ad-y internet will emerge.

I said:

RT @samim: “The Case For RSS”: RSS needs a comeback. Twitter is basically a glorified realtime RSS reader.

and

Going back to text-mode internet sounds more and more appealing every day. Maybe the French were right with Minitel being sufficient and filling the rest of their lives with delicious food, wine, family, art snobbery, cinéma.

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I even have a long form essay about it. Lest you think I’m screaming into the void (well, maybe I am, but I’m not doing it alone). I found this wonderful article from a kindred spirit, Marc:

I firmly believe the Internet, and what it stood for, peaked with RSS…

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Marc continues:

I found my answer in RSS. I enjoyed the freedom to see sources as I wanted, the flexibility to move to a new reader if I wanted, the complete lack of advertising. It was hard to not fall in love with the service.

However it wasn’t until I began working from home and everything in my life moved online that I really began to notice how beneficial RSS could be with relation to Digital Wellbeing. By selecting only the sites, blogs, creators etc. that I had a serious interest in, I could effectively remove the negative effects of social media and excessive online usage from my life. It was easier to get involved in serious Deep Work as I had no social feeds to endlessly scroll through. It was easier to stay informed as I could only see the latest items rather than being given an algorithmic infinite feed of supposedly “breaking news.” I could open my reader maybe twice a day, skim through the latest items and continue on with my work, a process that could be over and done with in under 5 minutes - a far cry from opening Twitter and suddenly 2 hours have passed…

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