Alec Saunders has a post about Twitter and RSS feeds that caught my eye.
It brought to mind a conversation about Twitter with a friend on Tuesday and our theme was similar: the interplay of Twitter, blogs and RSS feeds. Alec writes:
To say that RSS is dead is to say that the only television worth watching is CNN News. All Anderson, all Sanjay, all Larry, all the time.
I think it’s worth considering some of the messages in a piece that Nicholas Carr wrote last year in Atlantic Monthly, called “Is Google making us Stupid?”
media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
With Twitter’s limit of 140 characters, it is Coffee Crisp compared to dining. Twitter makes a nice light snack but it is no replacement for a complete and balanced dinner. Of course, we don’t always have time for a multi-course balanced spread, but I have to think that a diet comprised solely of junk food will catch up to you in time.
By the way, you can follow this blog on RSS or Twitter or the old fashioned way. I doubt I will ever be able to keep to the bite-sized Twitter, but you can always click on the link.