💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › u › daruma › 17956 captured on 2024-12-17 at 15:08:24. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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What are we?
There is the clearnet or surface web, which is everything that is searchable in the www, html world. Then there is the deepweb, which is www html that is not searcheable, password protected forum, wall garden etc. Then there is the darkweb, in onion and Tor nodes.
There is the smolweb, which is hand crafted, but still www,html based. What is the web that is ssh, gopher, gemini, mud, moo, nntp based?
Protoweb is partly the answer, but Gemini is not proto, for instance. I feel this text only world, is below the deep web, yet not dark web.
Jun 17 · 6 months ago · 👍 Houjimmy
💎 istvan · 2024-06-17 at 05:29:
The Forgotten Web.
💀 requiem · 2024-06-17 at 07:05:
I liked “the underweb” - can’t remember who coined the phrase - but it feels totally apt.
🦁 Houjimmy · 2024-06-17 at 07:45:
I think you are wrong. We are also part of the smolweb. There is hardly any difference betweem Gemini and Gopher, most of the time the users of the first also use the second. The hypertext of gemini is so limited that in fact there is any diference between the use of the two of them in terms os usability.
In my opinion, if we want to be something more than a niche smolweb someday, gemtext will need an upgrade, at least to have a minimal usability alike to html2 (tabs and columns to organize things in the screen and display some basic images along the text).
🦁 Houjimmy · 2024-06-17 at 07:47:
requiem,
please "apt install some_fancy_fonts_n_fontsize some_tabs_and_columns" because it still feels like gopher 99% of the time.
🕹️ skyjake [...] · 2024-06-17 at 10:54:
I believe Gemini (and Gopher etc.) are usually thought of as part of the smolweb.
I wouldn't be opposed to "Artisanal Web" though. 🙂
🚀 mimas2AC · 2024-06-17 at 13:10:
At Station I posted this link some months ago. a lot of different webs. maybe someone find it interesting. https://diagram.website/.
👺 daruma [OP] · 2024-06-17 at 15:23:
Yeah underweb is something I use often as opposed to the surface web, but not dark web. The smolweb is also comprise of small web crafted site, so what I was refering to is the web without the html part. I agree gemini is in the smolweb but there is this other part of the web, that is text only and reacheable trough a terminal, very low bandwith usage etc... @mimas2ac that quite the map! Thanks for sharing :D
😎 flipperzero · 2024-06-18 at 00:58:
I think instead of 'smallweb' should instead be adopted as 'smallnet' since web denotes any dealings with WWW, which is not the case. In tandem, I think 'smallnet' should extend to like what daruma illustrates but even further into the CLi and text-only or even those which require their own clients like gopher/gemini, like nostr, ipfs, etc as it seems that there are even intersections between the different levels of connectivity.
Othernet?
👺 daruma [OP] · 2024-06-18 at 01:47:
I like this differenciation between web (www) and net (other) food for thoughts...
ether.. net :) heheheh invisible, granular, older, minimal...
I think there are a few different uses of "web"; sometimes it can refer to anything with a URL, although sometimes it is a more specific meaning that does not include everything with URLs. However, not all internet services have URLs, and not all URLs refer to internet services.
Some people including myself will use "small web" to refer to Gopher, Gemini, etc.
Also see:
— https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41164188
World Wide Web was concieved as interconnected documents. The format to facilitate this was HTML (hypertext markup language), which would be transferred over HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol).
The World Wide Web could link outside the Web to other non-Web URL schemas, such as FTP, SMTP, Gopher, etc. But these were part of the wider Internet, not the World Wide Web.
This is why Gopher is referred to as "an early alternative to the World Wide Web" as opposed to a component of the World Wide Web.
I think the breakdown is confusion over the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web, which was always a subsection of the Internet.
TLDR: If it's not on HTTP it's not on the Web.