As I begin to type this, I pause and, recalling simultaneously the last 45 minutes of surfing and the past several years, ask myself, "How did I get here?"
In that question lies the seed of a very important idea.
To answer the 45 minutes question, I've been reading the web as usual, culminating with Rebecca Blood's thoughtful and complete History of Weblogs. Another admirable history is also available from Christopher Allen
What this and other commentary implies about the blogosphere, aside from the power-laws that begin to take hold within these and other fledgling networked communities, is a certain holy-grail. Blogs are a combination of the most personal and public/community-oriented aspects of the net and it is that peculiar cycle of confession/expression and reading/reacting that makes them fantastic.
The problem with the blogosphere is the same as the problem with Geocities (or any other fast-growing online community).
STEIGER'S LAW:
The top-level navigation of any online community degrades as a function of the number of its participants.
Solving this would be fantastic -- allowing context and a sense of space that only got richer and more informative and people populated it.