I don't think we are regressing because the AOL of olden days was an indicator of why the Flipboards of today is successful and why Google Reader is dead. We were never progressing to begin with because the mass was not interested in curating their own, rather, they are happy with the apps buttons, the beautiful looking magazines and what not.
Google Reader isn't dead, it was killed with tens of millions of users. Three million people have already migrated to Feedly, and that's just the more savvy users.
My sense is that MOST of the users won't come back. And that's a shame, because they were very important. Delicious is still around--I haven't logged in in a year. I love Google Reader, but I might just use this as an excuse to read a lot fewer sites...or more books.
The point is that RSS is dependent upon user's self-creation needs, versus that of a thing created for them by someone else. TV by its very nature a medium which is created for you and Internet was supposed to be the opposite of it. I agree with the gist of the argument presented in the OP's article but my point is that we were never progressing on the Internet for the better although it surely looked like that we are and we will. The lack of adoption of RSS by the mass, is just one evidence of how we use Internet like it is a TV.
IMO the lack of adoption of RSS is more due to technical reasons and the complex nature of it than a lack of motive. You use TV as an example, but today YouTube has much more viewers than tv, choosing their own content. Picturing people as a homogenous, brainless mass is very short-sighted.
What is technical and complex about self-curation? The whole idea of self-curation is non-technical and anything but complex. One can blame the engineering of RSS and all, and one can even conjure up the conspiracy theories of big media, advertising and such, but the basic fact remains .... people at large are not into curating, finding, searching information on their own. They'd rather other feed information on the plate. There is nothing brainless about such a need. It is just how people wish to evolve.
Pinterest is a stroefront where people are either selling, or they're window-shopping. How do you arrive at assuming Pinterest as a curation tool?
Look at the earlier version of Delicious. It was a curation tool. Look at it now. Do you see a difference between what Delicious now shows versus what you see see at Pinterest? Throw in clipboard.com. They've at it before Pinterest showed up.
When it comes to accessing information, there is a difference between "saving" information and "acquiring" it. Sites like Facebook, Google+ etc are all into serving you means to "save" and not acquire. If you wish to acquire information, they'd rather you acquire first through their Ads infested window-front store. By the time you get to the meat of any substantive information, you have lost the real opportunity.
The RSS protocol was the real substantive engine of a means to acquire information, an ultimate self-curation tool which empowers one with information and not distraction. Again, you must have noticed, the biggest complaints on the demise of Google Reader came from the typical journalist community and the tech savvy people. The know the value of pipes which was serving them information. The mass never cared and still don't because they'd rather be served. Pinterest and window-shopping sites like these are only creating illusion of curation.
