humane technology
some of what we need is already here, especially on the web. Look at the resurgence of RSS feeds, email newsletters and blogs, as we discover (yet again) that relying on one app to host global conversations creates a single point of failure and control
Maria Farrell • We Need to Rewild the Internet
Chad Aaron Hall added 4mo
The reason the death of Google Reader matters, here, is that it marks a pivotal moment in the deliberate and engineered shrinking of the internet. When Google Reader died, article discovery shifted. People were no longer reading RSS feeds, finding new sites, following them, and being updated when those sites posted. Instead, they were scrolling on
... See moreKelsey McKinney • The Internet Isn't Meant To Be So Small | Defector
Chad Aaron Hall added 4mo
Humans are much better at choosing between a few options than conjuring an answer from scratch. We’re also much better at incrementally approaching the right answer by pointing towards the right direction than nailing the right search term from the beginning. When it’s possible to take a “type in a query” kind of interface and make it more incremen
... See morethesephist.com • Navigate, don't search
Chad Aaron Hall added 4mo
In the map-with-route system (direct manipulation), the user must do some of the work of understanding what they see (the map), and developing a mental model of how to apply it to their context (reading the map). In exchange for this deeper involvement, the user learns a useful mental model (their local geography) that can help them in future uses
... See morethesephist • Personalization, Measuring With Taste, and Intrinsic Interfaces
Chad Aaron Hall added 4mo
“the user must do some of the work”
RSS has been pronounced dead over and over again, yet it is still not dead and I doubt that it ever will be. In fact, it is witnessing a little comeback from time to time. Personally, I have started to use it more regularly again and others have, too. RSS is a great way to follow the people whose posts, ideas, and opinions matter to you.
Matthias Ott • Into the Personal-Website-Verse
Chad Aaron Hall added 4mo
RSS is and always has been superior to social media. There's no scrambling to see what you might have missed. There's no hunting. It's all there ready for you to read it when at YOUR pace. (I'd add Readwise Reader to this list. It's my choice.)
RSS has only failed to be the dominate source of curation because of advertising. Companies cannot inject advertising into your RSS feed, the way they can in a social feed. Their business model fails without that. Perhaps it's time we realized that social media companies are third-party interlopers who have injected themselves into the relationship between writer and reader, in the same way scammers and get rich quick gurus into our carefully curated feeds.
Chad Aaron Hall added 4mo
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