So, I'm really trying to jump on the RSS train. I've added some feeds to this site, and I've made my RSS reader my browser home page. I'm basically forcing this technology on myself to try it out. Now, this really isn't my first swim through RSS. For many years, I used Yahoo's "My Yahoo" page as my home page. "My Yahoo" allows you to add RSS feeds along with other types of content, and it bundles that content with links to my email and my fantasy baseball team. It's a one stop shop.

Here's what the "My Yahoo" page looks like, and here's what my current RSS page looks like. Both provide content from all over, though the yahoo presentation is probably a little bit nicer to look at. However, there's something that both of these pages do that interests me: They rip content from other contexts and place them on my desktop.

In essence, RSS seems to be based on the assumption that the text is what matters. Thus, if there's a New York Times story about Abu Graib or a CFP from tech geek story from Slashdot, RSS readers can' t provide that text in context. An RSS reader doesn't give you the story in it's visual context, it doesn't show you the story next to other stories. It might even take away the important experience of browsing a web page and scanning through headlines. We might say that RSS merely puts off this experience. Once you click on one of your RSS links, you're taken to the web page, right? But aren't you most times taken to a persistent link for that web page? Haven't you skipped straight to one story, sneaking in through a side door and skipping the front page?

All of these factor lead me to think that RSS either skips the kairotic event of reading a web page or creates a brand new kairotic event.

[definition of Kairos - "Fullness of time; the propitious moment for the performance of an action or the coming into being of a new state." (OED)]

When we read a website, infinite factors are at play (some of which, incidentally, have absolutely nothing to do with the site or its design). All of those factors are a part of kairos - a part of the singular experience of reading a website at any given moment. What does RSS do to that experience? What does RSS do to web content? Does it assume that content is content, regardless of how we come to it? Can RSS itself assume anything, or does our use of it mean that we are making assumptions about content? Is RSS really taking off as a technology, or is it something still confined to techies and geeks?