Adios, Algorithms. Hello, Email. Remember Me?
Over my career, I have created more websites, reports, dashboards, and databases than I can count. And then there are systemsβlots and lots of systems. Some my clients demanded them; others I built strictly for myself. (RacketHub is a labor of love.) During my foray into higher ed, I taught courses in the W. P. Carey Department of Information Systems.
I'm not complaining. I enjoy creating systems because I think in terms of structured data. Why they implode is the subject of my first book. Hell, my previous website was the embarrassingly long philsimonsystems.com until I grabbed its current, snappier domain name. You get the idea.
A few years ago, I built a bespoke one that retrieved content and let me consume it on my terms. It was decent but imperfect. In this post, I'll explain why and how I built the old system, its limitations, and why I ditched it for a decidedly low-tech successor. Feel free to steal borrow it or modify it as needed.
Background
I prefer doing things without distractions, especially reading. Not surprisingly, the powers that be don't make it easy to focus. None of this was news to me, but Adam Alter's exceptional 2017 book on the subject revealed the extent of the problem. Tech companies intentionally design their apps, websites, and devices to distract us from what we're doing. You needn't be a neurologist to know that living in a state of continuous partial attention isn't ideal.
It'll only take a moment.
