This has been talked about pretty extensively at this point, but here are my thoughts as originally authored a while ago, finally hitting their place in the publish queue.
First, what prompted this? Everyday, general queries like trying to buy a book or looking up some information.
For example, recently I wanted to check what's new in the Addison-Wesley catalog and see if I can buy some dead-tree book.
More and more of the web appears to be broken.
I can't find what I want, instead I'm fighting other systems trying to push me in directions I'm not interested in.
No clear answer, to be honest, but there some choices are better than others, so we don't simply have to resign ourselves to a worse web.
I'm assuming search engines and sellers are optimizing for some particular metric that is not aligned to my own interests. Even if I'm coming at them with the intent to disburse some money, the user experience is so hostile I'm likely to give up in frustration and come back some other day.
Curating my own set of tools and links and places of interest is one approach I've taken. I keep RSS feeds to things I'm interested in, and I check some popular websites every now and again as well to discover new things.
There are some "social" media that are really some sort of user-generated mini-broadcast stuff; things like reddit or threads or various largely-anonymous forums.
Thankfully, I don't have to keep up with every social website (although I check in with the ones I find valuable), and I don't have to deal with all the user-antagonized interfaces thrown at me. I have options, which I choose to exercise.
Although I recognize that some of this is unique to my situation - I don't have to engage with marketing or building an audience on the internet for my livelihood, so I can sidestep much of what I find irritating.
Dear reader, hopefully this prompts you to reconsider how you're investing your time as well, and whether there may be better strategies that work for you to get what you want out of yout attention.
Happy web rediscovery!
Tags: review