The accumulation of feeds becomes one more thing to check, one more inbox to process. Nobody likes seeing their unread items count spiral out of control, and quickly skimming headlines to catch up doesn't feel like engaged reading.
Brett Kelly has recently described why he quit RSS in an effort to read more intentionally:
I realized that, for some reason I couldn't quite recall, I felt obligated to stay abreast of new developments in technology and such.
That fabricated obligation led me to routinely scan big lists of headlines and, more often than not, mark the whole mess as "read" and go on to something else. Imagine this happening 2-4 times per day and I was spending between 10-30 minutes per day skimming or ignoring stuff that, for the most part, wasn't what I wanted to read.
Instead of obsessively checking his RSS feeds, Brett has committed to reading longer material (in his Kindle) and to using Instapaper for managing blog and news posts that he'd like to read. How does he discover those posts, if he's not subscribed to hundreds of feeds every day? Twitter:
Abstract: On March 3 and 4, 2010, the ELI community gathered for an online focus session on mobile learning. This white paper is a synthesis of the key ideas, themes, and concepts that emerged from those sessions. The white paper also includes links to relevant focus session materials, recordings, and archives. It represents a harvesting of the key elements that we as a teaching and learning community need to keep in mind as we work to integrate mobile technology into teaching and learning in higher education. It is clear that while the application of mobile technology to learning is just now getting under way, the potential is enormous and we can expect that the rate of development will be very rapid indeed.