💾 Archived View for lantashifiles.com › gemlog › entries › 2021-11-27.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I think about the websites I have put together in the past, at places as varied as Geocities (dating myself there!), WordPress, GoDaddy, etc, and about how little technical expertise you need to create a website. A lot of places rent you websites, and even provide ways for you to get a domain easily, and you do your website design via a web interface. You don't need to know HTML or Javascript or CSS, and many don't understand what goes on behind-the-scenes with "domains". Places like Wordpress, or Square Space, give you wizards, and with just a bit of effort your website comes to life. It "just works".
You also don't need multiple tools or skillsets to create the website. wordpress.com has everything you need to create a WordPress website. You don't need to use a text editor, create your files, and upload them somewhere.
Putting together my Gemini capsul was easy, for me. I already had a server and domain. I am very adept at remote administering a Linux box, having done it a lot both at work and personally. And gemtext is dead simple to use. After deciding to create my capsul, it was up and running in about 15 minutes (with no content... just a hello world).
From what I can tell, right now, the read-only nature of Gemini makes it so that you have to have a skillset to create a capsul. You need to write your gemtext, either on your home box or on the server, and put it into the relevant directories on your server. You have to install a Gemini server onto your remote server as well, and set up the service for it. Again, not hard for me, but for your average non-computer expert, it might be daunting.
I can see in the future, if Gemini becomes popular enough, people creating *websites* to allow you to create Gemini pages. Maybe the Gemini company will be called "GemPress", or something like that :) That seems a bit strange though, using the older, heavier protocol to create a capsul on the younger (very young), light-weight protocol. If a user was going to do that, would they prefer just to create a website?
I don't know.
At two years old, Gemini is still in its infancy. While I don't believe it will ever compete with www in popularity, there is definitely a space for it. I really like the speed and simplicity! But at the moment, viewing the various gemlogs and capsuls, it seems to be a very tech-savvy place. That isn't bad, as I am very tech-savvy myself. But it will be interesting to see where it goes, and whether it appeal to those outside the tech community.
To a lot of people, social media *is* the internet. Some people, many people, spend the majority of their time on the Internet inside platforms like those above. It is even easier to create your online space, online presence, in something like Facebook or Twitter where you don't need any expertise *at all* in order to use them. Not needing the expertise is probably why they became so incredibly popular.
I also view them a pretty toxic. I won't go into that here, as the social media platforms' issues are well documented, including how AI algorithms, in promoting user engagement, figured out that people are more engaged if they are fighting with each other (a sad commentary on people).
With the lack of comments and feedback, at least on a capsul itself (you can email the authors to comment, assuming they provide their email address), there isn't, as far as I can tell, any "grandstanding" by trying to fight with other people. I haven't seen any "trolls" on Gemini... knowing human-nature people probably email angry messages to an author from time to time, but since no one will see the message except the troll and the author, there isn't anyone to "egg the troll onward", no toxic feedback loop.
That at least is my observation so far. I've only been paying attention to Gemini for a few months, and only started my own capsul a few days ago. Gemini seems like a calm, interesting place. Since there seems to be a lot of tech-savvy people on it, that is very interesting. I've run across one or two things I disagree with, but who cares? I've always told people not to base your self-worth on whether other people agree with you. But without endless comments sections, I haven't seen the fighting that you can see on a www blog, or in FB or Twitter.
Email: lantashi [at] protonmail [dot] com