Yesterday I tried to sync my hundreds of RSS favorites in NetNewsWire that I had accumulated on two different machines via NewsGator itself -- I had done it via .Mac until my demo account expired -- and what happened is that a good portion of them were pulled out of their categories and left on the main root, uncategorized. My "web" and "politics" and "business" and "Apple" folders were empty, and all those feeds were now all mixed up. I don't know, maybe some were even lost.

I tried moving various feeds back into their categories, only to see them unceremoniously yanked back out of their folders when NetNewsWire synced again.

Randomness in my feeds! Arrrrgghhh! Information chaos! Efficiency in input management has been diminished. Four years ago, I never would have guessed just how dependent upon RSS feeds I would find myself. I had enjoyed going to individual sites -- I still do -- but I can get at much more information more quickly and efficiently via my feed reader, and now I've become addicted to that input.

If you're old enough to remember the movie Short Circuit, you'll remember when the robot Number 5 goes just a little bit crazy seeking out more and more input.

"Input! I need more input!"

Have I become a robotic input junkie?

I confess that, despite my initial skepticism, I've been kind of won over by Twitter. Not that the vast majority of tweets flying down my Twitterific window are particularly informative or even relevant to my day, let alone necessary prerequisites to living a fully informed life, but it can be interesting getting a sense of what people's days and nights are like, what they find interesting without making a big deal of it, what gets under their skin.... Most of these folks I'm following I don't even know. I just find their blogs or tweets interesting enough to follow them. But it almost doesn't matter. I'm not one who's going to Twitter my way into increased productivity. This is now part of my internet background radiation. An electronic walla that makes the worldwide web just a tad bit more friendlier.

It tends to make staying focused and getting things done a bit more of a challenge, though -- and "it" is not just Twitter, it's all of the information that comes streaming at me. Input from every direction, and with new ways to consume it, share it, distribute it being invented every day.

Living in a country where John Stewart and Stephen Colbert fans end up more informed than views of television news (and with consumers of Fox news left most uninformed of those surveyed -- is there an ironic comment opportunity there?) and where we're on average becoming progressively more uniformed, one starts to wonder whether this information explosion is proving to be rather unmanageable for most people.

Too much information?

Or is it, perhaps -- just maybe -- not enough of the right kind of information?

What kind of information do we need? I'd argue that the information we need is information that happens to be relevant. And relevance can be measured in any number of ways -- relevant to your career, relevant to your movie tastes, relevant to your health, relevant to your mood, relevant to your funny bone. But finding relevance in the info-torrent pouring in through your internet connection can be increasingly difficult.

In the end, I think the ultimate measure of relevance is connection. Isn't that what we're doing with all of our blog posts and tweets and texts and meet-ups and barcamps and conferences and....?

Tara Hunt summarized her BlogHer '07 experience:

I’m sure there was something there that was rooted in competition…in measurement, but even when women stood up and talked about their highlights at the end of the Open Day, they told stories about moments where they were changed. People they had been dying to meet because they did something wonderful and inspirational. And new friendships.

Success to everyone I observed was about connecting. Not for any sort of gain of power or money, but for the sake of connecting. And I would connect with one woman and she would begin that conversation telling me the most wonderful story of her most recent connection with another woman, who I would, of course, want to go and meet.

Tara goes on to impress the import of stories, kindness, sharing, community, mentoring, collaboration ... things that create relevance by offering connections.

And just yesterday, Amber Simmons brings the same message in a new prescriptive for online content writing:

The distinction I make between “content” and “copy” is my own: I
don’t pretend this is an industry standard. But we all know copy when we read it: it’s the marketing fluff that serves no purpose but to take up space. It doublespeaks and obfuscates. It’s the inflated speech of the politician using many words to say nothing, the sales pitch of the greasy used-car cretin whose crafty euphemisms try to disguise the fact that his product sucks. Copy is recognized by its pervasive use of agonizing words such as “leverage,” “optimize,” and “facilitate,” or a litany of intolerable phrases such as “economically disadvantaged,” “heavyset,” “law enforcement officer,” and “ethnic community.” Writing like this is self-conscious and boring—what’s wrong with saying Marvin is a poor, fat cop from the ghetto?

(If you find yourself writing like this, by all means, use bullets and omit words. The less of this pain inflicted upon the reading public the better.)

Content, on the other hand, fills a real need: it establishes emotional connections between people. The writing has heart and spirit; it has something to say and the wherewithal to stand up and say it. Content is the stuff readers want to read, even if they have to print it to do so. (And readers will print a long piece; just because something is published online doesn’t mean it must be read online). Content is thoughtful, personable, and faithfully written. It hooks the reader and draws him in, encouraging him to click this link or that, to venture further into a website. It delivers what it promises and delights the attentive reader.

I remember the first time I read Shelley Jackson’s My Body. I was enchanted by her narrative, compelled to click her many links, to delve deeper into the stories about her arms, her legs, her breasts. I wasn’t concerned about how long I was reading. I was not at all bothered by her lack of headlines, and I most assuredly did not pine
away for want of a bullet. This is real writing: beautiful, lucid, captivating. It doesn’t matter what the subject is; content should enrich our experience of any website, be it a university website or a personal blog. Give me passion and give me flair, and I will give you my full attention, page after page after page.

That is relevance!

Meanwhile, the day once again has gotten away from me and it's time to find some relevance for my tummy. Tomorrow I'll be at it again, seeking out the humanity in the machine we've become.

Tech & Web Contributing Editor Laura Scott blogs at pingVision and rare pattern.