RSS and Information Overload

Depending on how you use it, RSS can either mitigate or aggravate the problem of information overload. In last week's exercises, the use of RSS as a consumer greatly controlled my information overload problem. Instead of visiting numerous sites and checking individually for updates, updates are sent to me in real time (or close to real time). It was somewhat overwhelming to log into Google Reader for the first time and see nearly one hundred new updates. However, since I don't read every post on every feed, it was easy to get through, and now I keep on top of it.

However, in this week's exercises, RSS as producer, I found RSS to be somewhat aggravating. Part of this week's exercises included creating a feed digest on our wiki. I understand the point of the exercise - to become familiar with digests - but I don't understand the greater purpose of feed digests. It only served to clutter my wiki page and annoy me (I don't like clutter). I don't check my wiki page very often, so even though I created the feed myself, I'd never use it. I'd rather check each page either manually on Google Reader. I think I'd be afraid of missing something by only using a digest.