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:author:
mcgillij
:category:
Web
:date:
2021-01-20 23:33
:tags:
Web, Gopher, Gemini, Fancy, #100DaysToOffload
:slug:
wtf-is-gemini
:summary:
WTF is Gemini? Really⌠is it just a fancy Gopher?
:cover_image:
gemini.jpg
Not the critter, the protocol.
Pre-dating **http**, in the early 90âs gopher was pretty well my first exposure to the *internet*. I distinctly remember going to the local University, and sneaking into the computer lab and being shown how to browse for things using the gopher protocol.
This was pretty mind blowing at the time, however by todayâs standard, itâs not really something to write home about. But at the time, at home my only computer was hooked up to the television and used a tape deck as storage with no modem or internet.
I remember there being
,
(Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives) and Jughead search engines and all sorts of mostly academic material on there.
Having learned, that computer scientists sometimes get to name the things they were working on with clever acronyms. This may have been the reason I pursued a career in computers :)
Shortly after **http** was released and the internet landscape changed almost overnight and gopher essentially got left in the dust. It only took a couple years for drown out the academic content that was initially so great about gopher and early http days and replace it with *ads*, spam, trolls, malware, propaganda etc.
From what I can gather,
(even though it was developed in 2019) seems to occupy a space between *Gopher* and the modern web.
A *fancy* gopher if you will.
It seems to me almost like the internet equivalent of hipsters, where nostalgia strikes a chord with the content vs trying to be flashy and attention grabbing. I donât think thatâs necessarily a bad thing, but itâs a bit âhardâ to get into I guess intentionally is what Iâm trying to say. Your average facebook user isnât likely to be aware of Gemini nor care, and thatâs not bad.
Some may argue that the internet signal to noise ratio was much higher back when only technical folks were able to use it. Now that itâs hit the mainstream to levels that wouldnât even have been fathomable even 25 years ago.
Back then trying to explain the internet to the average person was about as entertaining as talking about your dentist appointments.
Gemini seems to be trying to capture the old school feeling of the internet back when the only sites up were from people actually passionate about their give subjects interested in connecting with others over the subject matter rather than trying to win a popularity contest, get **likes** / **views** or **upvotes**.
It doesnât seem to want to replace either gopher or http, and thatâs fine. That falls right in line with the vintage feel of Gemini.
There seems to be a few clients available for Linux, Mac and Windows, both GUI and terminal applications along with a couple proxyâs for viewing with a regular browser.
Although Iâd argue that maybe using a browser to access this content is missing the point???
Much of the feel of the internet of old was in the ceremony, which is maybe lost by just using a browser, at least for me, but maybe Iâm just weird.
If you are old enough to remember Gopher or want to know what it used to be like âback in the dayâ, try out Gemini itâs a current snapshot to what the internet could have been without corporate interest and gross privacy violations and feels pretty good.