The endless nagging of RSS readers

Dave Winer writes:

Most RSS readers remind the user, all the time, how wrong he or she is. Or inadequate or lazy or behind in their work ... Who needs that.

Think about it this way. Suppose you read the paper every day. What if at the top of the paper it told you how many articles from previous issues you hadn't read.

News is not email ... Every article is not necessarily something you should read, or even look at ... If I'm not interested, or too busy -- too bad. No need to count the number of articles that didn't get my attention. It's a useless piece of data.

See also my earlier post, "RSS sucks and information overload", where I said, "The problem is scaling attention. Readers have limited time. They don't want information. They want knowledge."

[Winer post found via Matt McAlister]