/blog

Robin Sloan mentioned my 'now' namespace proposal in his latest newsletter saying it "isn't exactly the right next step" but that "thinking about these trans­for­ma­tions and extensions ... is extremely useful and produc­tive."

The namespace is a demonstration of the ability of RSS to distribute more than just blog posts. It is an effective means of distribution but has, perhaps, become a victim of its own success.

The medium becomes the message, typecast and pigeonholed, limited by what it does to the exclusion of what it could do.

The problem with a mature technology and its ecosystem is in getting the existing tools to adopt change and support new features. And not the even new. Just look at the lack of support for titleless posts in feed readers despite them being part of the RSS spec for over 20 years.

These new transformations and extensions often require new tools, adaptations of what has come before or something completely different. They may not gain widespread adoption but the thought processes involved show what could be if only we want it bad enough.