In the latest release of Snowden materials from the Intercept, is a gem, an internal NSA memo from 2/18/2004, where someone (whose name is blacked out) at the NSA is spreading the gospel of RSS to the NSOC Operations Support Staff.  She or he says: 

On the Internet, data sources as varied as Dilbert, ESPN Sports news, bankrate.com mortgage news, and Microsoft security updates are all available via RSS. At last count there were over one million RSS feeds available on the web, with more being added every hour. RSS has the potential to revolutionize the way we view the web, both at home and here at work.

It's easy to forget how exciting everything was in 2004. 

If you're a regular reader of this blog you probably remember.

And it's a reminder that techies everywhere love to cobble together networks using pieces that weren't designed specifically to work together, but because of interop, when you get the idea to join them (and here's the famous phrase that gets all geek hearts beating faster) "it just works."

That was the thing about networks built out of RSS in 2004. It was a miracle how well things just worked. 

Geeks everywhere, including at the NSA, love this stuff. ;-)

Ryan Tate at The Intercept asked how I felt about this. I said it's awesome. 

And thanks to Edward Snowden for helping to make this connection.

PS: Here's the archive page on Scripting News for that day.