The Return of Gopher: Pre-web hypertext service is still around
- Reference: 1653301571
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/05/23/the_return_of_the_gopher/
- Source link:
[1]
The Gophie gopher browser running on a recent Linux distro, displaying the Playdate announcement
Gopher is a point-and-click internet protocol that predates Tim Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb. Although the web has almost totally replaced it, Gopherspace still exists. The snag is that, just as modern [2]web browsers are removing FTP support , they long ago got rid of Gopher support.
But all is not lost. Firefox users can re-enable it with a choice of extensions, including [3]Overbite and [4]Underbite . Chrome users could try [5]Burrow . Rather than full gopher browsers, these direct Gopher links through public Gopher-to-Web proxies.
Saying that, though, there is even a modern dedicated Gopher browser. It's called [6]Gophie , and as it's a Java app, it runs on all the main platforms. Also worth a look is [7]Castor , a modern Rust-based client for Gopher, Gemini and Finger.
Once you have one of these installed, you should be able to view the announcement ( gopher link here ) about the [8]Playdate console project, as seen on [9]Twitter . (Playdate is an interesting little project in its own right: an open, monochrome-screen handheld games console, with a unique analog input device.)
[10]
Gopher's modest revival seems appropriate given the interest in the [11]"small web" , [12]concern about web bloat, and increasing interest in [13]lighweight hypertext protocols such as Gemini . In fact, Gemini itself is even documented ( gopher link here ) in gopher.
[14]
[15]
Your humble scribe started exploring the internet via [16]JANET in the mid-1980s, and used Gopher, [17]Archie , Veronica (warning: gopher link ) and so on when they were new, so it's been enjoyable to read about people [18]discovering it anew.
Gopher is even simpler than Gemini, and it's already there, which is [19]relevant . The underlying file format is a plain text file, called a gophermap , containing tab-separated entries which a gopher browser displays as menu entries.
[20]Toaster-friendly alternative web protocol Gemini attracts criticism for becoming exclusive clique
[21]Google talks up its 540-billion-parameter text-generating AI system
[22]In conversation with Gene Hoffman, co-creator of the internet's first ad blocker
[23]Hell desk to user: 'I know you're wrong. I wrote the software. And the protocol it runs on'
You can click them with a mouse, or navigate with a keyboard, and although gopher has its own internet protocol (described in RFC [24]1436 and accessed over port 70), gopher sites can be distributed via file shares or on removable media.
Another type of internet presence in the same vein is the [25]tildeverse , which is a group of communities based around very minimalist, Unix-hosted personal sites such as [26]tilde.club and [27]tilde.town , sometimes described as a "social network accessed via SSH."
[28]
The tildeverse has something of the same fun, chaotic feel about it as the early, pre-web internet communities of the 1980s. Your correspondent plans to resurrect his quarter-century-old homepage and join in. ®
Get our [29]Tech Resources
[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/05/20/gophie-screenshot.jpg
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/21/firefox_ends_ftp_support/
[3] https://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/
[4] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/underbite/
[5] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/burrow-gopherspace-explor/plhaaggiajlcjclagmjnjmaonhkdhhji?hl=en
[6] https://github.com/jankammerath/gophie
[7] https://sr.ht/~julienxx/Castor/
[8] https://play.date/
[9] https://mobile.twitter.com/playdate/status/1520144706511904768
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YouvqKdBurwiem1D3xmeswAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[11] https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/
[12] http://danluu.com/web-bloat/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/27/gemini_protocol/
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YouvqKdBurwiem1D3xmeswAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YouvqKdBurwiem1D3xmeswAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://www.jisc.ac.uk/janet
[17] http://archie.icm.edu.pl/archie_eng.html
[18] https://charlieharrington.com/surfing-the-gopherspace/
[19] https://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/27/gemini_protocol/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/05/ai_google_language/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/08/interview_gene_hoffman/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2017/08/11/on-call/
[24] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1436
[25] https://tildeverse.org/
[26] http://tilde.club/
[27] https://tilde.town/
[28] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YouvqKdBurwiem1D3xmeswAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[29] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Even when the Web existed...
Gopher was great for the hierarchiacal kind of information that academic institutions produce: course lists, faculty lists, etc. The breakthrough with WWW was about publishing articles where cross referencing was required and it was a simple step for an IT lab from publishing an article on particle-bashing to publishing the canteen's menu.
Since then, even though we know all about the problems associated with taxonomies – those that from afar look like flies – we continue to return to classifications to keep our heads above the water!
doesn't solve ad bloat
The reason for which gopherspace is not bloated with ads is not technical; it's merely economical. If, somehow, everyone started using gopher, then gopherspace would become bloated with ads in short order. They'd be text-only, maybe ascii-art, but they'd be there.
Re: doesn't solve ad bloat
"text-only, maybe ascii-art, but they'd be there"
Very true; however there is much less damage and tracking that baked in text can really achieve.
You are right though, the monetization arses will ruin it somehow.
IT doesn't Need Ad Bloat to Float its AI Boats
Surely, Filippo, anyone using Gopher Spaces are fully expecting their text contributions to be advertising their sensitive wares to like-minded smarter entrepreneurial types ...... and in all of the best instances for stealthily remotely commanding and controlling ..... well, who knows how many extremely interesting and enlightening programs there may be out there to play Greater IntelAIgent Games.
One thing you can be absolutely certain of though, is such is a seriously ACTive nightmare for the likes of any spooky NSA or GCHQ type crews intent on exercising their own disruptive programs in support of status quo dinosaurs for they are not fit for any purpose therein/thereon and will suffer greatly and interminably should they choose to not leave future matters to that and/or those who would know better that they what both needs and can be easily remotely done via alien virtual means and attractively addictive virulent memes.
Re: doesn't solve ad bloat
"They'd be text-only"
Y'know, that might be fine. I sort of automatically ignore most ads in newspapers and magazines and even TV because they clearly aren't of interest to me. Don't need cat food. No cat. I'm moving on. Not currently in the market for a car. Moving on. Don't think solar panels in a rather cloudy and snowy climate at 45 degree N latitude can possibly be a good idea. Moving on. Once in a great while, they offer something of interest. I've even been known to buy stuff as a result of reading them.
I think text only ads (within reason) MIGHT be OK. At least, unlike the web's Javascript abominations, they probably can't infect my computer with nasty malware.
Gopher never dies
I've been running a public-access gopher server for about 5 years now, and am never ceased to be amazed by the minimal hardware it needs to run. I started off with a Pi Model 2B originally and it has since graduated to a small corner of my Intel NUC web server box. I get several hundred visitors weekly from all over the world, and no bots/scrapers. It's a very impressive protocol.
I love the Reg
One article going how great it is to want a bloat free experience.... And another demanding Safari updates so we can have more bloat.
Gopher isn't actually any older than the Web...
I only ever tried out Gopher briefly circa 1994-5 (when the Web was already the Next Big Thing and- in hindsight- rapidly displacing Gopher). I almost forgot about it, and later assumed that it had been one of those pre-web, pre-Eternal-September-era technologies which disappeared after that mid-90s transitional period (a la Usenet (*)- which I *did* use a lot- and telnet/text-based BBSs).
But I found out just a couple of years ago that Gopher wasn't actually older than the web- they're pretty much contemperaneous!
Wikipedia says
[1]"Gopher system was released in mid-1991"
and
[2]"In 1990, [Tim Berners-Lee] developed the foundations for the Web [and] the browser was released outside CERN to other research institutions starting in January 1991, and then to the general public in August 1991"
Apparently Gopher's adoption was damaged by the announcement in early 1993 that licensing fees would be charged for implementations of the protocol, though I suspect the Web's more flexible design would ultimately have won out regardless.
(*) Yes, I know it's still used for binaries, but as far as its original purpose- news and general discussion- goes, it's been dead for a *long* time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
A Bit Before My Time
Somehow gopher, archie, and veronica were almost forgotten about by the time that I graduated from C64 BBSs to the World Wide Web. (Pete's Pond Page anyone?)
I honestly do look back nostalgically on those early, pre-HTTPS days, when you could write a web page in notepad, when you found all manner of very cool stuff at Yahoo, and when a home page likely as not included a photo of your own actual home.
Those of course were the days when web sites, links lists, and everything else were managed by living, breathing, thinking human beings, not by brain-dead algorithms. There may have been significantly less volumes of content on the web, but the signal to noise ratio - or at least the signal to advertising ratio - was much, much better.
Despite technical limitations and dial-up speeds, I could generally find what I wanted faster and easier than is the case today. At the very least I didn't need to battle algorithms, paywalls, SEO hacks, and endless YouTube popup ads trying to get a some simple answer.
I can even recall, and I'm not making this up, a time when the web had NO advertising, and when anyone suggesting it should be allowed would be attacked mercilessly.
Re: A Bit Before My Time
I remember the first time I tried a new fangled web search engine from a little company called Google, instead of my then favourite Altavista, and thought it worked well so started using it regularly ... hell, I even recommended it to people. That was about the time I last used Gopher ... When it comes to mistakes, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Re: A Bit Before My Time
Yeah, remember how amazing ut was that Goigle invariably turned up exactly what you wanted?
And now? A giant SEO hash of utter useless garbage.
I have gopher in a OS/2 Warp 3 Connect VM
It works fine. The sense of nostalgia and simpler times is very tempting. Now desktops need 4GB of RAM.
The original Internet can still be found in remote corners
Whenever I need a break from the current Web x.x dreck I slip away to [1]sdf.org
A self funded holdover from the ARPAnet days. The Welcome page provides some context.
[1] https://www.sdf.org
Yearling - BBC?
Way back in the 90's I remember someone called Yearling at the BBC hosting some interesting pages. They mostly talked about TV programmes and on occasion alien conspiracy theories, great stuff. I can't recall if the pages were Gopher, Lynx or early HTTP.
Did anyone else come across this site?
Even when the Web existed...
Back in the day when I first used the Internet at university I had the chance to use the early WWW. It was a rubbish experience (especially with the network connections in Australia then). I went back to Gopher, Archie, Veronica. When the web took off I still tended to use Lynx which is sadly no longer really possible for most sites these days. Glad to see there's various projects kicking back against bloat and prioritising information again - as it should be.