article-tgtimes-national-library-medecine.mw - tgtimes - The Gopher Times | |
git clone git://bitreich.org/tgtimes git://enlrupgkhuxnvlhsf6lc3fziv5h2hhfrinws… | |
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article-tgtimes-national-library-medecine.mw (2906B) | |
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1 .SH tgtimes | |
2 Gopher for Medical Research | |
3 .2C 50v | |
4 . | |
5 .PP | |
6 The National Institute of Health is well used to the Gopher protocol, | |
7 for it used it as a way to publish medical documentation. You named | |
8 it: \fIPubMed\fR itself have been delivering documents through Gopher: | |
9 . | |
10 .IP "Phone books" | |
11 with name, phone number and e-mail addresses of those willing to submit … | |
12 . | |
13 .IP "Images" | |
14 like weathermaps, | |
15 . | |
16 .IP "Audio" | |
17 such as 1992 presidential debates, | |
18 . | |
19 .IP "Books" | |
20 and all kind of publcations, also proposed to users as a way to publish … | |
21 . | |
22 .IP "Videos" | |
23 short ones, but also on-demand movies! | |
24 . | |
25 .IP "Telnet" | |
26 interfaces with login and password, | |
27 . | |
28 .IP "Search engines" | |
29 For browsing this entire content. | |
30 . | |
31 .PP | |
32 The technical bulletin of March-April 1994 reveals as much. | |
33 While 1994 does not sounds like a world gifted with nowadays unlimited t… | |
34 . | |
35 .IP "Spotify" | |
36 were files through Gopher. | |
37 . | |
38 .IP "Netflix" | |
39 were files through Gopher. | |
40 . | |
41 .IP "PubMed, ResearchGate" | |
42 were files through Gopher. | |
43 . | |
44 .IP "Instagram" | |
45 were files through Gopher. | |
46 . | |
47 .IP "Facebook" | |
48 were publication as files through Gopher. | |
49 . | |
50 .IP "Amazon Kindle" | |
51 were text files through Gopher. | |
52 . | |
53 .IP "Office365" | |
54 were telnet interactive session, or WordStar, PostScript, and ASCII | |
55 files through Gopher. | |
56 . | |
57 .IP "Google" | |
58 was either gopher search, or interactive telnet sessions, with | |
59 sometimes powerful query languages, permitting to filter the result | |
60 held in the databases: \fISearching for references about Italians | |
61 with AIDS that are not indexed with ITALY (MH)\fR | |
62 . | |
63 .PP | |
64 This showcases that a lot of thing declared as \fIpossible today | |
65 thank to the advances of technology\fR were available since as early | |
66 as 1994. With much less bells and much less whistles. With much less | |
67 bandwidth for everyone, but existing bandwidth much less used as | |
68 well. | |
69 . | |
70 .PP | |
71 Interactive database querying languages would look a bit uninviting, | |
72 and TurboGopher (showcased in the document) has not all the font, | |
73 layout, media integration features of modern day web browsers. | |
74 . | |
75 .PP | |
76 Under that perspective, the race to technology looks like not a quest | |
77 for new use-cases, but taking what was possible in the early days to | |
78 in a crude format and only to some initiated, to the masses, in an | |
79 inviting layout, packed onto small, shiny objects that fit on a mere | |
80 pocket. | |
81 . | |
82 .FS | |
83 https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/archive/nlm_technical_bulletin_mar… | |
84 .FE | |
85 . | |
86 .PP | |
87 One year later, the Gopher for Science and Medecine project still is | |
88 blown at full steam, as the National Library of Medecine publishes | |
89 a bibliography for setting-up gopher servers for collaborating on | |
90 specific medical topics. | |
91 . | |
92 .QP | |
93 Developing a subject-specific Gopher at the National Library of Medicine | |
94 . | |
95 .FS | |
96 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7599590/ | |
97 .FE |