Re: The geminauts (Was: Gempub 1.0.0 ; A new eBook format based on Gemini Protocol's Gemtext

I'm 31, and my first introduction to the web was in the late 90s. The "old 
web" of my memories is Geocities, marquee tags, flaming text and 
gratuitous use of GIFs (well, some things don't change I guess). 
Javascript was far from ubiquitous, but it was gaining popularity (9 year 
old me had a great time playing with alerts and prompts on my Angelfire 
page, which wouldn't have made for a great user experience, if I'd had any 
users to begin with).

So, for me Gemini isn't really a return to anything, because the 
cleanliness and minimalism it aims for predate even my earliest experience 
of the WWW. Though I'm sure browsing Geminispace would be a breeze on 
dial-up - until someone wanted to make a phone call...

On 26/04/2021 19:44, Göktuğ Kayaalp wrote:
> On 2021-04-26 08:31 +02, 'Stephane Bortzmeyer' <stephane@sources.org> wrote:
>> On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 04:35:29PM -0700,
>>   raph@raphm.com <raph@raphm.com> wrote
>>   a message of 57 lines which said:
>>> Also, I'm new to this list and to Gemini (hi, everyone!), but I'm
>>> old enough to remember when we called it "the net" and not "the
>>> web". Gemini does a great job of bringing back the
>>> impossible-to-describe feel of the early 1990s internet, right after
>>> BBSs and right before Canter and Siegel did their thing and filled
>>> up my NNTP drive.  :)
>> I don't know if a researcher already did a survey of geminauts, and of
>> their age. Are they old people nostalgic of the beginning or young
>> people eager to revolutionize "Dad's Web"? I was also a Usenet admin
>> at the time of C&S.
> 27yo here.  We’re the generation that had it the worst, literally went
> to school and back uphill both ways :P  I was a teenager as free software
> desktop went from a hackers’ joke to a reality, almost.  Saw computing
> fly towards a nirvana of sorts, then get T-boned by FAANG and slowly
> become the thing it is today.  We went sideways and backwards.
> 
> What brings me to gemini is thus not really nostalgia but a desire to
> track back to ~2010 and move in the better direction, reclaim that
> ruined climax, if you will.  Same with Fediverse, with static websites.
> 
> That’s also maybe why I wasn’t ever a fan of Gopher.  I don’t think of
> Gemini as a retro thing (even tho I like the vibe) or a minimalist,
> simplistic thing (even tho I like the perks).  This whole thing feels
> like a net step forward to me.
> 
> 
>             -gk.
>

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