The Joys and Pitfalls of Bloglines
I really like Bloglines. It keeps track of all of my favorite blogs and news feeds and lets me know when something new has been posted. Its a great time saver, because I never have to waste time load page-after-page to see whether my favorite sites/blogs have been updated.
I now have blog feeds set up for just about every subject that interests me: PC and X-Box gaming, sports, friends' blogs, blogs from leaders in the emergent movement, Christianity Today, Slashdot (a really cool feed for techie-nerd types), etc.
Almost all of my web surfing time now originates from Bloglines. I normally don't even look at headlines that aren't associated with one of my hand-picked feeds. Bloglines has replaced (1) the newspaper, (2) the evening news, (3) news and talk radio, and (4) internet "homepages" with various headlines as my primary source of day-to-day information.
Today I'm wondering: is this really a good thing?
What I've done, essentially, is made myself editor-in-chief for all of the news and information that I review. I have a feed or two from MSNBC which, if I bother to review them, might tell me a little about what is happening in the world, but for the most part the information I consume is tailored to the relatively narrow spectrum of my personal interests.
Is this good? Today, I can tell you that Joel Quile has a virus, that Southern Baptists are starting to seriously dialog about emerging culture, that the high in Abilene today will be around 93, and that a new PC budget game called Fate has just hit stores. I can also tell you about Chris Gonzalez' reading habits. On the other hand, I have only the smallest inkling about what is happening in Iraq (from occasional glances at MSNBC feeds), nor can I tell you about the hot issues in Washington these days. I also have no clue what my local government is (or isn't) up to.
What do you think? In an age where it has become possible to assume control over the types of information that are consumed, should people be responsible about the way they go about selecting that information?
I now have blog feeds set up for just about every subject that interests me: PC and X-Box gaming, sports, friends' blogs, blogs from leaders in the emergent movement, Christianity Today, Slashdot (a really cool feed for techie-nerd types), etc.
Almost all of my web surfing time now originates from Bloglines. I normally don't even look at headlines that aren't associated with one of my hand-picked feeds. Bloglines has replaced (1) the newspaper, (2) the evening news, (3) news and talk radio, and (4) internet "homepages" with various headlines as my primary source of day-to-day information.
Today I'm wondering: is this really a good thing?
What I've done, essentially, is made myself editor-in-chief for all of the news and information that I review. I have a feed or two from MSNBC which, if I bother to review them, might tell me a little about what is happening in the world, but for the most part the information I consume is tailored to the relatively narrow spectrum of my personal interests.
Is this good? Today, I can tell you that Joel Quile has a virus, that Southern Baptists are starting to seriously dialog about emerging culture, that the high in Abilene today will be around 93, and that a new PC budget game called Fate has just hit stores. I can also tell you about Chris Gonzalez' reading habits. On the other hand, I have only the smallest inkling about what is happening in Iraq (from occasional glances at MSNBC feeds), nor can I tell you about the hot issues in Washington these days. I also have no clue what my local government is (or isn't) up to.
What do you think? In an age where it has become possible to assume control over the types of information that are consumed, should people be responsible about the way they go about selecting that information?
posted by Matt at Tuesday, June 21, 2005
2 Comments:
This just in...
I still have a virus but my attitude is a lot more healthy!
So I guess you could say that while I'm on the pot I'm not down in the dumps?
Great post Matt.
I wonder how what you've done is different from people who choose not to read the newspaper, watch tv, or even read any news headlines on the internet? I'm not saying that either is right or wrong, just wondering.....
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