Information; Pull vs Push

Since the dawn of press the era of information push has been evolving. Followed by analog radio and then television. Before that there were only libraries in castles and monasteries and they required special effort from those who wanted to access information.

The dawn of the Internet promised the end of the push era, as anyone, with little effort could start looking for what they exactly wanted instead of being pushed things they never knew they might want or care about.

But it seems this even this little effort to search and follow is too much for most people. Push is stronger than ever in the Internet era. Web pages and mobile apps are bombarding users with push information and it seems this is the default model accepted by most societies.

Personally, I enjoy more than ever the pull opportunity that is still present in the Internet.  Long live RSS readers! I continue to fine - tune my list of RSS sources to exclude "marketing" sites that update frequently with trusted "personal opinion" sites that update less frequently. As of today I think I am subscribed to ~100 sources and my daily reading list is about 70-80 posts long.

The value of pull and ad-free easy to consume and valuable content is also underlined by the success of some recent initiatives like the paid version of Ars Technica. Clearly there are people willing to spend dollars to spare themselves from striking pushy ads. I am one of them.

There is an interesting new type of information service emerging though. It manifests itself via applications like Google ("Google for iPhone" or "Google for iPad" or "Google Now Launcher for Android"). It does a decent job profiling the interests and definitely presents the pull approach -  you need to explicitly start the app and refresh the view.

Pull is what seems to keep me up to date with large number of [relevant] developments and news. To some extend launching the Feedly app (which I use as the RSS reader of choice) is like going to a library....