(TXT) View source
       
       # Why Gopher?
       
           (\~---.
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                  `w   "       -nathaN
       
       I feel enthusiastic about the community of tilde and smol Internet
       users, not about the specific protocols and software involved.  I'm
       all for building a community of creative people (artists, hackers,
       musicians, writers, and so forth).
       
       Some basic gopher clients are lynx, gopherus, and curl.
       
 (HTM) lynx
 (DIR) gopherus
 (HTM) curl
       
       The charm of the gopher protocol is its technical simplicity.  For
       technical details, see this link:
       
 (DIR) gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/files/gopher/
       
       Below are notes in chronological order.
       
       ## 2018-01-22 - Jessamyn West on Gopher
       
       Gopher is the information without the flair, the HTML without the
       Javascript.  Gopher gives me what I want when what I want is to read
       stuff, not like/comment/interact/favorite/share etc.  I'm a big fan
       of all of those things, but sometimes I just want to read a thing on
       an old computer and follow a few links.  Gopher lets me do that.
       It's ultimate Old Web and I am one of those ultimate Old Web ladies
       who still uses Lynx occasionally...  --Jessamyn C. West
       
 (HTM) https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kwek8/long-live-gopher-the-techies-keeping-the-text-driven-internet-alive
       
       ## 2019-12-04 - Plain Text Project
       
       So why does plain text matter? It's a ubiquitous, almost universal
       format. You can easily create plain text documents on any operating
       system and on any device. You don't need a specialized tool to do it,
       either. Plain text is also very long lasting.
       
 (HTM) https://plaintextproject.online/
       
       ## 2020-09-06 - The Internet Is For End Users
       
       When there is a conflict between the interests of end users of the
       Internet and other parties... [you] should favor end users.
       
 (TXT) gopher://gopher.fnord.one/0/Mirrors/RFC/rfc8890.txt
       
       ## 2022-03-11 - The Authentic Web
       
       Brereton told me recently that his frustration began in late 2020.
       
       I was browsing the Internet one day, and I began to feel like
       something was just off," he said.  "A lot of the content doesn't feel
       authentic--it doesn't feel real."  He sounded bemused by the runaway
       popularity of his post, which was part of a personal research project
       on how information is organized online.  Better information could be
       found on social media, discussion boards, and small-scale personal
       blogs, but Google Search was deprioritizing those platforms in favor
       of corporate Web sites, which could afford the money and effort it
       takes to optimize for Google's search algorithm.  "The authentic Web"
       seemed hidden, Brereton said.  "The algorithms tell us what to read."
       
 (HTM) From: What Google Search Isn't Showing You https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/what-google-search-isnt-showing-you
       
       ## 2022-07-14 - The Future of the Internet
       
       This model is likely the future of computing and networking, and it
       is no minor tweak.  It's a wholesale revision to the Internet and PC
       environment we've experienced for the past thirty years.  The
       serendipity of outside tinkering that has marked that generative era
       gave us the Web, instant messaging, peer-to-peer networking, Skype,
       Wikipedia--all ideas out of left field.  Now it is disappearing,
       leaving a handful of new gatekeepers in place, with us and them
       prisoner to their limited business plans and to regulators who fear
       things that are new and disruptive.
       
       From: The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain
       
 (DIR) gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2022-07-14-the-future-of-the-internet-by-jonathan-l-zittrain/
       
       ## 2022-07-21 - Algospeak
       
       Algorithms are causing human language to reroute around them in
       real time.  I'm listening to this youtuber say things like "the bad
       guy unalived his minions" because words like "kill" are associated
       with demonetization.
       
 (HTM) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/08/algospeak-tiktok-le-dollar-bean/
       
       ## 2022-07-30 - We don't need to rebuild the Internet
       
       They also like to bemoan the things we've supposedly lost:
       communities (forums), old technologies (IRC, gopher, newsgroups,
       RSS), and things like that.  Things from the so-called 'old web'. 
        
       The things is, though, a lot of those things still exist, still run
       by hobbyists (yours truly included).  You just have to have an
       interest in something beyond your social media network's walled
       garden and know how to get out there once in a while.  Those are two
       things that we nearly *have* lost, and it's really disappointing to
       me.
       
       [In other words this author says we need to rebuild a sense of
       curiosity and teach each other how to step outside the walled
       gardens.]
       
 (TXT) gopher://ymodem.org/0/phlog/2018/rebuildtheinternet.txt
       
       ## 2022-10-28 - Human scale technology
       
       Small technology, smallnet and smolnet are associated with
       communities using alternative network infrastructures, delinking from
       the commercial Internet.
       
 (HTM) https://damaged.bleu255.com/Small_Technology/
       
       The smallnet crowd is DIY-minded, they self-host community-run
       servers and community-built services, often using limited CPU,
       memory, disk space and bandwidth by choice, using simple protocols,
       formats and tools.
       
 (TXT) gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/~spring/phlog/2019-01-18__Small_Internet_Manifesto.txt
       
       ## 2023-09-30 - Dead Internet theory
       
       The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts
       that the Internet now consists almost entirely of bot activity and
       automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic
       curation, marginalizing organic human activity.
       
 (TXT) gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Dead_Internet_theory
       
       ## 2024-04-14 - TLS Apocalypse
       
       Enthusiasts on internet maintain a Crypto Ancienne library, which
       can be used by old computers to natively connect to services
       encrypted with modern crypto algorithms. Their README states that a
       Motorola 68030 CPU at 25MHz requires 22 seconds of prime number
       computations to connect to a server, and most servers hang up the
       connection during that time.
       
 (HTM) https://github.com/classilla/cryanc/blob/main/README.md
       
       ... I think the resurgence of the Gopher protocol means that Gopher
       is likely the best place for old computers to live, since it's a
       trivial protocol to implement, there's clients for even very limited
       systems like the Commodore 64(!), and lots of people in the
       retrocomputing hobby are rediscovering it...
       
 (HTM) https://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-tls-apocalypse-reaches-power-macs.html