The email in-box borrows its logic from your mail, and you probably at least glance at every piece of mail that’s sent to you—simply because they were all meant for you. Your email in-box carries the same logic. The Instagram “feed” or the Twitter “stream” are entirely different metaphors.10 A stream rushes on even if you’re not there to see; it gurgles by in the dark, when you’re asleep. To say that information is a stream suggests that it’s there for the taking, if we wish to drink, not that we have to consume it all.
