I was first introduced to the concept of a river of data, by Dave Winer; I was reading one of his feeds; I’ve not actually met him. In his mini-polemics against google reader, which used a mail browser metaphor, he argued that feed reading was like standing on the bank of a river; you could and should only read what you can see while standing at the bank. Any attempt to catchup with the water gone past is a waste of time.
Anyway that’s how I remember it. …