Tech for Philosophers: Google Reader

The internet has become densely populated with philosophy blogs and other content. A lot of this content is, or would be, interesting to philosophers but the time and effort required to keep up with all the content strikes many as an insurmountable obstacle. Checking every blog or site every day is tedious and inefficient. After all, if the other blogs are anything like this one, they update sporadically and so you are visiting a site only to see the same content you saw last time.

An RSS reader such as Google Reader is the perfect solution to the information overload. Read on to see how RSS readers can make your internet philosophy life much more efficient.

What is an RSS reader?
Most websites and blogs send out what is known as an RSS feed that contains information about the content of that site or blog (if you have ever noticed that little orange square with the white lines in your browser bar, that is the symbol that indicates an rss feed). You can think of an RSS as a websites way of sending out emails about new content (posts, stories, etc.). An RSS reader is a program that can tune into these website emails and collect them all in one place. Instead of going to a website, you open your reader and you see a list of all the content that has been sent along the feed. You can mark items as read and have them filed away, or keep them around just like you would your email.

Why should I use an RSS reader?
An RSS reader allows you to efficiently gather information from a variety of sites with minimal effort on your part. Instead of checking 40+ philosophy blogs, most of which only update occasionally, I can open my reader and see all the content from all those blogs.

And, it isn’t just philosophy blogs that have RSS. Almost every website you read on a regular basis publishes a feed. Photo sites such as flickr have feeds so you can follow your friends albums. An RSS reader can become your centralized portal to content on the web. While you might still use the web for research, you can avoid the usual digging around the web for the content you want.

Not only that, but because it becomes so efficient to skim through content, you can increase the number of sites you pay attention to. Imagine how little email you could get through if you had to go check a personal page for each of your contacts? Email works because you get all your information in one place and can quickly prioritize it. RSS provides the same service.

How do I get started?
There are a variety of RSS readers available. I use and like Google Reader (http://reader.google.com). It is an online reader which means no downloads. You will have to sign up for a google account. If you prefer a desktop application, I have used and liked RSS bandit (http://rssbandit.org/).

Once you sign up for (or download) your reader account, you need to start adding feeds for your reader to follow. Google Reader has a button marked “add a subscription.” By clicking this button you can type a url to search and add to your reader. When you first “subscribe to a feed” it might seem a bit overwhelming because it will show you all the content on that feed. In google reader, you can mark these all as read if you want to start fresh with only new content (chances are if it is a site you read regularly, you won’t need to review what is already there).

Once you are in Google reader, you will want to play around to customize your experience. You might also want to find more content to add. I suggest looking through the list of weblogs maintained by David Chalmer’s at http://consc.net/weblogs.html

Enjoy.