The Agricultural Revolution of Information

Prior to this exercise I had not even heard of RSS or Feedreaders. I had been in the practice of hunting and gathering for information much like our ancestors did for food. It was often a long and laboring process but it was commonly believed that the gains outweighed the losses. (Food for our ancestors and tomorrow's weather forecast for me.)

Over time our ancestors adopted new, more sophisticated ways of their attaining their sustenance, turning from their hunter/gather paradigm to one that embraced agriculture. "What a boon to mankind!" it was undoubtedly argued, "All the food we could want in one place where we can more easily manage our food supply!"

RSS and Feedreaders seem much like that to me. Informational agriculture! "What a boon to mankind!" it is now argued, "All the information I could want in one place where I can more easily manage it!" Bloglines is in essence my information garden. You choose what you want to be exposed to and limit your exposure to things that are distracting like endless advertising space.

I have been tinkering around with bloglines for a little while now and currently have feeds which include The New York Times, The Shifted Librarian, Library Development, LISNews, librarian.net, Librarian's Internet Index, and (one of my personal favorites) a Daily Dilbert Comic Strip. I have also had the opportunity to follow what other Learning 2.0 participants are doing and see how they are progressing through the program.

Here is a short video describing the benefits of RSS as the new, fast way to access and manage information.