No wonder we don’t listen any better that we currently do.  We get to be lazy and listen to one voice at a time, rather that a cacophony of voices.

 

I was thinking about which I like better for following RSS feeds – NewsGator or FeedDemon.  I like that both organize feeds very efficiently.  And both let me forward an interesting post via email.  Don’t get me wrong – I love being able to conveniently sit in the middle of a bunch of big brains, and listen in on all those conversations you’re each having with that little voice inside your head.

 

…and yet neither really encourages a discussion.  Why have we all congregated around the conference podium model, rather than the roundtable model?  Do most folks really just want to be able to do drive-by brain-sucks?  Every now and then, if you subscribe to way-too-many feeds, you’ll be able to put together an interesting discussion, usually involving kicking the crap out of Dave for something.  And it’s still next-to-impossible to have a real discussion.  Yeah, yeah – I remember the origins of RSS – CDF broadcasting and all that.

 

…and then I remembered Agent, by Forte.  Ah yes, the threaded discussion model.  And then I remembered, hey, didn’t Chris propose something similar not too long ago for RSS 2.0 feeds?  So here’s an appeal to Greg and Nick – please implement support for comments in NewsGator and FeedDemon.  …and here’s an appeal to Scott and others – please implement this in your engines.  Is this the right model – I don’t know, and it sure seems like the simplest one.  And here’s an appeal to ya’ll – please let everyone else know what you’re thinking.