CamWorld via About MetaFilter

I wanted to include a passage from an entry from CamWorld in his search for signs of intelligent life in the universe (thank you, Ms. Tomlin and Ms. Wagner) and his pursuit of the meaning of blog. He is declaring a slow-down of his blog, which is indicative of the evolution of the online journal:

In the long run, I believe that this is what you all want. Less senseless hype. Less gratuitous linking. Less focus on the sensationalistic journalism that's crowding our brains and turning them into mush. More focus on the truly exceptional content out there on the web that only a few of us manage to dig up. More personal essays. More professional essays. And yes, even the occasional rant.

You see, CamWorld is about me. It's about who I am, what I know, and what I think. And it's about my place in the New Media society. CamWorld is a peek into the subconsciousness that makes me tick. It's not about finding the most links the fastest, automated archiving, or searchable personal web sites. It's about educating those who have come to know me about what I feel is important in the increasingly complex world we live in, both online and off.

CamWorld is an experiment in self-expression. And that experiment is not over. Over the next year (or two or three), CamWorld will evolve into something more.

This was written in 1999.

Here he writes about the future (our present):

I hope the weblog "craze" continues as more and more people discover the power of a regularly updated site that reflects their own unique personality. In a few years, it'd be neat to see the weblog format overtake the standard home page format with monster GIFs of people's cats, dogs, babies, and cars. But I doubt it will happen. It's taken us almost six years to get people to understand that home pages don't need to have every funny little GIF animation they've ever seen, or silly javascript rollovers, or even that crash-happy Java-based pong game. Focus more on the content and less on the glitz. As the Internet community and Geocities members realize that the reasons they've had only 102 hits on their page(s) in a year (100 of them from their own IP address), the quality of their online initiatives will go up as they begin to understand what is required to keep a regular audience happy and well-fed.

How far we've come. Here's a monster GIF of my baby.