Push or Pull?

I remember the early days of the push technologies on the Internet. It was only a few years ago but looking back I viewed them as one of those great ideas that failed due to poor marketing and implementation.

The biggest one I can think of was Microsoft’s Active Desktop concept. You would put “objects” on your desktop and they would automatically receive updated information whenever the sources pushed information out to the subscribers. I’m not sure why this didn’t ultimately work, but I always through that the concept of items automatically being sent to me was a great idea. Why it didn’t catch on in the long run I’m still not quite sure.

Today we have RSS and aggregators. This XML language and its associated client software allow you to “subscribe” to a feed and then receive the updates whenever they occur. Almost every presentation that mentioned RSS at this year’s Computer’s in Libraries conference (and there were many of them that did,) described this as a ‘push’ technology. I beg to differ on this description. It may seem like push but is it really?

In a true push environment, beyond the actual setting up of the subscription, there is noting more to be done on the part of the client, whether you consider the client to be software or a human. But this is not how RSS aggregators work. With these programs you need to set up the subscription and tell the aggregator how often to recheck the subscription. Every time the aggregator rechecks and finds a change, it transfers the information from the server to the client. It ‘pulls’ the information.

Granted, RSS may seem like a push technology since there is minimal human involvement in retrieving this information, but it is being retrieved, i.e. pull, not being received, i.e. pushed.

Now, some of you may argue that I’m splitting hairs. I’ll admit that I say that when I click on a Web link I “go” to a page when I know deep down that I’m not “going” anywhere. (I’m actually sending a request for a page which is then sent back to me.) But, I’m sure, in at least one of my classes, to point this out to my students, to make sure that they at least understand the concept even if they’re going to go back to the way of talking about it like everyone else does.

Here’s my question. When teaching people about RSS and aggregators, should we be describing it as a push technology when it really isn’t?

(Yes Jenny, I’m expecting a comment from you on this.)