So, I have this blog because the new Google toolbar, a nice improvement on the older version, includes -- along with means to block popups, a form-filling button and an easy "search images" button -- a "BlogThis!" button lnked directly to Blogger, now owned by Google. I don't like being unable to have an RSS feed, though perhaps Blogger will eventually restore that option. But I like the convenience of blogging interesting news items by pressing a button.

This makes me think of fears expressed by Cass Sunstein and others that Internet content aggregators will allow us to see only news that we want to see, insulating our minds from new and different ideas. Blogging itself might be thought to be a challenge to that; I know I don't agree with Howard Bashman, but like the rest of us I read How Appealing. But what I find interesting is Google's use of its status as portal to push me not to particular content, but simply to a particular site where I put out my own content. That's not anything I would have anticipated when thinking about individualized aggregators. Maybe the only thing we know about individual speech on the Internet is that we don't know what it will look like in five years (though site traffic will probably still be subject to a power law).