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jsreed5 jsreed5 at protonmail.com
Sun Aug 8 16:03:47 BST 2021
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On 06/08/2021 21:23, Pete D. wrote:
I'm struggling to understand how a gemini client would help the girl on
the 2nd hand PSP. There is literally no usecase there for gemini to have
helped.? We could donate money to her local library to have a public PC
or something. And if you are talking about infrastructure issues with
that, well, the 2nd hand PSP connected, so that problem was solved a
different way.
I agree that Gemini clients probably won't *need* to be created on old hardware anytime soon, if ever. Instead, I see such a pursuit as worthwhile for purposes of leisure and enjoyment, especially for people who can't afford newer hardware.
Today's Internet is dominated by Javascript, WebRTC, and many other frameworks that make sites too heavy to use on old hardware. On top of that are streaming services like Netflix and digital gaming services like Steam, who can arbitrarily decide that your particular system is no longer compatible with them even though it's physically powerful enough. The end result is that much of the part of the Internet people use "for fun" is no longer accessible.
In my experience, especially among people in my generation, that's why people throw out old technology--not because their smartphone can't still make calls or access their banking needs, but because Reddit or their favorite mobile game doesn't work on it anymore.
Gemini provides tons of interesting content that can't be found anywhere else, at least in aggregate, and I thoroughly enjoy simply browsing Geminispace to find interesting articles and services. As a low-power, low-bandwidth protocol, Gemini can easily run om old hardware. And since it already has a lot of users, there's already a lot of content to explore. Heck, there are already aggregators and services that pull content from the regular Web and serve it over Gemini.
This situation is one way I see users reducing e-waste. Much of the spending on extravagant, high-end computers in the first world is for gaming PCs and HTPCs: systems that are meant to entertain us. If we find enjoyment from simple, lightweight protocols like Gemini, and if those protocols run perfectly on the hardware we already own, we might not be so quick to buy the latest graphics cards and RAM sticks.
I think as far as entertaining content goes, Gemini could well serve as essentially a replacement for the Web on old hardware. No-one's going to be filling out an application for temporary housing on it, but if it allows people to still enjoy their old computers and smartphones, that's a good enough reaspn for me.-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20210808/0095dfc9/attachment.htm>