I’m no longer working with Lifehacker, which is disappointing. But I’m grateful I got to spend two years doing one of my favorite things: finding great indie and open source tools and sharing them with readers.
I couldn’t be happier that Current, a different sort of RSS reader, is the last app I wrote about over there. If you like the idea of RSS, but find RSS readers stressful, this app is built for you. The decision to not have any unread counts means I can open the app, read the headlines that are interesting, and close it. And I can configure different feeds to stick around, meaning I don’t have to worry about losing track of articles. It’s a piece of software designed to stress you out less.
So it makes sense that Terry Godier, the developer, has a lot of opinions on the way we use technology now. Here’s an excerpt from a visual essay published on his own website:
Here is something nobody says plainly: Sometime in the last twenty years, our possessions came alive. Not all at once. Not dramatically. One by one, the objects in our lives opened their eyes, found our faces, and began to need us. Your thermostat has opinions now. Your television requires a login. Your car updates itself overnight, and sometimes when you start it in the morning, the interface has rearranged itself, as if someone broke in and reorganized your dashboard while you slept.
He’s giving words to an idea I’ve had for a while but couldn’t quite express: that we’re all spending too much of our time babysitting our technology. I highly recommend reading the entire essay (and clicking the buttons on the Casio F-91W).
https://lifehacker.com/tech/current-fixes-my-biggest-issues-with-rss-readers
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing