2020-10-14

New technology --- Keep it simple, stupid!

#smolnet

#gemini

I have recently read more about how the internet is broken nowadays. So apparently I'm not alone with this. For me probably 99% of the data transfered to my web browser from say www.tagesschau.de is irrelevant. Brett Gilio has written this up more nicely.

https://brettgilio.com/posts/2020-10-11-javascript-other.html

Drew Devault (of sourcehut fame) is right along the same lines.

https://drewdevault.com/2020/08/13/Web-browsers-need-to-stop.html

gemini://drewdevault.com/2020/09/27/Gemini-and-Hugo.gmi

local copy

However, his posts sparked my interest in the gemini protocol, which is somewhere between gopher:// and html-1. So I decided to try this at home. Here we are. It's not clear how this really goes /online/, but that is left as an excercise for later.

This technology fits nicely with Kris de Deckers attempt to build a low tech website.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-lowtech-website.html

In my not so humble opinion it is high time to reduce IT complexity by orders of magnitude. It would even offer the chance to substantially lower the ever raising demand of electricity. Maybe along the lines of

If you like, read a (paper) copy of John Brunners novel "The Shockwave Rider" for inspiration.

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