"An intelligent human being filters through the mass of information packaged daily for our consumption and picks out the interesting, the important, the overlooked, and the unexpected..."

Rebecca Blood's Weblogs: A History and Perspective
It's strange to think that I was only 6 years old in 1999, when only 23 internet blogs existed. It's even stranger to think that it didn't even take a few years for that number to skyrocket. As I began reading noted blogger Rebecca Blood's article on the subject itself, I was automatically intrigued by her way of relating the history of blogs and the way they quickly rose in popularity with seeing blogs as an outlet to be an artist rather than constantly being referred to as the "consumer" by the media. 


One line stood out to me- "as advertisements creep onto banana peels, attach themselves to paper cup sleeves, and interrupt our ATM transactions, we urgently need to cultivate forms of self-expression in order to counteract our self-defensive numbness and remember what it is to be human... I sternly believe in the power of weblogs to transform both writers and readers from 'audience' to 'public' and from 'consumer' to 'creator'." Blood is absolutely right. I think blogs are a great outlet for one to express not just feelings but a voice. Yes, one can speak an opinion by word of mouth to friends, family, and peers, but with such a blank canvas like a personal website made specifically to write really anything at all and the huge possibilities of the internet as an art museum, so to speak, writers have the power to express without restrictions. We don't always have to play the role of the audience.


Blood notes that Blogger (also known as Blogspot) was the first blogging website that did not have a structured template for its users. Instead of being restricted to a certain number of characters or needing some sort of previous HTML knowledge like the community site Metafilter, Blogger makes it simple. Although I have only been on Blogger for a few days now, I already love the fact that you are free to write commentary, personal stories, journal entires, etcetera, without any limits. 


I enjoyed reading this article- although I have been acquainted with the concept of weblogs and blogging sites, I did learn a lot more about their history, and I found myself identifying with Blood's opinions on self-expression.