1.0.  Mission Statement.
 
This gopherspace serves three purposes: 1) it is the
underground warren for a gopher landing zone on the Web,
2) it acts as a secondary venue for existing avocational
activities in communications and public risk management,
and 3) it facilitates the gophermaster's independent study
of this excellent little tool.
 
2.0.  Analysis
 
Gopher emerged during the rapid evolution of computer
networking just prior to maturation of the World Wide Web.
 
Like any good tool, the Internet has an associated knife
edge of reality.  Its potential to educate, inform and
empower is legend.  However, along with this positive
capability has come a dark side.  Privacy and security
concerns, commercialization, hacking, adverse risk to
minors, and infrastructure threats, vulnerabilities and
exploits are among the current concerns.
 
In retrospect, gopher's relative simplicity and more rigid
structure arguably are now among its greatest appeals.
 
In the Web environment, it often seems that far more time
and energy are spent on packaging, presenting and marketing
information, than on developing unique content or improving
its quality.
 
In the gopher environment, packaging and presentation are
minimal, and marketing is almost non-existent - content
withstands public scrutiny and receives standing based on
its own merits.
 
Since gopher emphasizes content and its access, resource
maintainers can focus on generating and improving that
content.
 
Moreover, because gopher addresses only the essentials, it
tends to be a "lowest common denominator" communications
tool.  This realization means it could find application in
a wide variety of communication contexts, ranging from
"deprecated anachronisms" to "contemporary essentials."
 
Gopher could be used in both wireline and wireless
mediums. Example applications include landline BBSes, Ham
radio PBBSes, MURS, USENET moderated newsgroups (and other
online forums), Web gateways, SMS (cell phone texting),
emergency alert systems and U-NII (the wireless component
of the Internet).
 
However, the possible use of gopher for new applications
presents some drawbacks.  The explosive popularity of the
Web has greatly diminished interest in the "primitive"
realm of gopher.  As a result, available content and the
number of gopher servers has decreased to almost zero.
Moreover, these factors feed on each other in a negative
spiral that dissolves into historical entropy.  (The same
situation applies to some of the example applications cited
above - a de facto family of "deprecated anachronisms.")
 
Although a full revivification of gopher is highly
unlikely, any contemporary attempt to constructively use it
will have to immediately address the need for CONTENT and
VISIBILITY.  It will also have to do so in a manner that
overcomes the drag factors described above, or else the
project simply won't fly.
 
Yours truly is highly receptive to producing both CONTENT
and VISIBILITY.  Collaboration is welcome!
 
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Contact and Status
 
Please direct feedback concerning this gopherspace or this
document to the resource maintainer:
Send site/document feedback to the gophermaster

Thanks!
Lee's Gopherspace at SDF and EPDR Net Outpost 4a
 
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Document owner:  Lee Knoper
Page last modified:  2006 UTC / 29 May 2008
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