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[TECH] [2021. II] On Gemini

Web has been transformed into a "surveillance-marketing complex." That one is surveilled by the world's governments, international corporations, all the way down to a local store chain with a half-decent marketing team, is not an error. Although a person may use the Web he is not the user in the proper sense. Him benefiting from system is incidental. The true users of the Web are governments and corporations from whom the individual persons interacting with the Web are a resource to be exploited. And the Web has been very well designed to fulfill that exploitation.

Like the Web, the Television serves government and commerce rather than its viewers. Fortunately, Television is a passive systems from which one can easily cut oneself off. Interactive surveillance screens of 1984 are here, but not necessarily as TV sets but as laptops, "smartphones," and host of other devices whose primary purpose is being a bridge to the Web. And unlike Television, the Web has embedded itself deeply into lives of the people that to extricate oneself from it requires an escape to the mountains or some similarly extreme measure.

For the was majority unable to free themselves from the shackles of modernity, and therefore of the Web in particular, a lot can still be done do regain some freedom from ceaseless spying and endless stream bombardment of advertisements. Migrating from Web to Gemini when possible is one of those thing.

Designed as "Gopher, souped up and modernised just a little," or "the Web, stripped right back to its essence," Gemini is an internet protocol whose core ideas are simplicity, privacy, and security. User tracking is impossible by design. All connections are encrypted. Furthermore, the specification that every request should result in the retrieval of exactly one static document and that no request can be made by the client without the user's express command guarantee that the protocol will remain in essence a file retrieval protocol, with the particular emphasis on dealing with plain text, and not morph, like Web did, into what is essentially an application distribution platform. This ensures that the governments and corporations can succeed neither in their surveillance nor commercialization efforts. This gives Gemini a great potential to be one of the pillars of free and non-commercial Internet.

The simplicity of the protocol and its markup language allow even the basically computer-literate people to be active participants rather mere passive observers. Anyone can create a capsule with the minimal effort. Furthermore, as Gemini separates matter from style it help people focus on what is important - the text they want to write or the selection of other files they want to share - and frees them from the burden of obsessing over endless decorating that is often frivolous and distracting mask that hides the lack of substance.

Gemini does not aim to replace the Web. And if it tried it would fail miserably due to society's reliance on government and commercial services hosted on the Web that Gemini cannot replicate. It can, however, provide a free and safe internet platform on which people can be engaged in the manner envisioned by the founders and pioneers of The Internet - a forum for exchange of ideas and information; a trove of knowledge to learn from and an interesting space to explore.