Our friend Josh Orum sent the link to an interesting post on information grazing by Joshua Porter.
Mr. Porter says the key to the future of information exchange is following the trail of frustration about what’s out there and how to find it. He points the way by cataloging the transitions in online reading since the late 90s.
We began with Site Grazing – entering the address of websites in search of new content. Pretty soon that got frustrating because there were just too many sites to keep track of – especially with no assurance of anything new.
Enter Feed Grazing in the form of Really Simple Syndication web feeds that told us new content was posted on a site we followed. The frustration came when we added one too many feed readers to our RSS list. All of a sudden we were back more or less where we started with too much sorting to do. Besides which there was a great deal of overlap among the readers so we ended up finding the same stories covered over and over from almost the same angle, not unlike television network newscasts.
Which led to the development of Grazing Lists that promised to help us find our way through the crowd of information aggregators. What we don’t always know with Grazing Lists is why a particular feed is on the List and that, once again, is frustrating.
The emerging group of Post Grazing services addresses that frustration by identifying the newest content from blogs dedicated to subjects like technology or finance.
Mr. Porter thinks the next truly sticky adaptation will be Personalized Post Grazing that zeroes in on our personal preference and reading habits.
He concludes by acknowledging that this may not be the Last Big Thing:
However, there may still be frustrations at the personal post level as well. One is our changing tastes. What if we track tech news for years and then find ourselves burnt out, and yearning for a different kind of news? What if we don’t feel that we’re discovering enough diversity in our personal recommendations…what if we feel like we’re missing out? With every level that we reach, we’re happy for only a short period of time. We will continue to want increased efficiency, and increased denseness of information.
This article represents – as nearly as anyone has – what’s behind the way I’ve presented notable news items and trends to others in my circle of friends. For years I circulated copies of articles that engaged me along with brief editorial notes about why I was sending them. It’s worth to note that the articles I forwarded were a rather eclectic mix of subject matters . . . determined by the underlying foundation of my worldview. I suppose InsideWork.net is a natural extension of that passion.
The articles in those big envelopes I mailed were a compendium of material on selected topics gathered in my weekly "grazing" of newspapers, magazines and trade journals I thought contributed to a holistic perspective on what was happening in the world.
This is why one of my concerns with RSS feeds has been a fear of what could be called "narrowcasting." When people pre-select what they’ll read based on a comfortable set of interests they run the risk of living in an information cul-de-sac. The handiness of having that comfortable flow of material sent to them can outweigh the value of challenging perspectives across a variety of subjects. This is the tyranny of convenience where the narrow-caster zeroes in on one thing to the exclusion of others.
People scan newspapers and magazines looking for articles that interest them. But the very process of grazing through the paper forces them to see and observe – maybe even read – articles they wouldn’t have thought to seek out. Those serendipitous exposures then create connections in their perspectives on life – their worldviews – they might never have experienced otherwise.
This notion has influenced the way I approach the Bible – which can easily be read in daily ten-page chunks over a couple of months. I don’t expect to get everything in every passage every time I read. My mind wanders, my attention is captured by something in the text even as I continue reading. I no longer get frustrated about that. I plow ahead, knowing I’ll be back this way soon. Grazing the scriptures habitually this way I find connections I never made before.
I think it was Karl Barth who said Christians should greet the day with the New York Times in one hand (I might substitute the Wall Street Journal) and the Bible in the other. This makes a great deal of sense to me – connecting as it does my temporary address in California with my permanent address in the kingdom of God.
I think this is the discipline of those who are developing a biblical worldview. If we’re going to cut a wide swath through the biblical text and the best thinking about the cultures where we live and work . . . grazing is about the only way to tackle the problem.
I try not to limit myself to print or computer-based media. I keep CNBC on in the background in my office and I listen to the New International Version of the Bible on my iPod (I chose an audio edition of the NIV with no music, no dramatizations – just the plain text – with chapter markers so I can scan forward and backward to what I want to hear.
My colleague Dan Wooldridge talks about the importance of healthy rituals – trigger points and patterns that order our lives in relation to God. We all have our rituals – coffee, news, sports, drive time radio . . . the question is, are we as consistent about creating meaningful spiritual rituals as we are about getting our caffeine . . . our financial news . . . our political fix?
All this falls under tooling our lives to walk with God. We come to work with skills and tools . . . I think we need to approach our spiritual development the same way – asking how do I work the biblical text into the breadth and depth of my life until I master it (or it masters me)?
