Diving into the Internet
by Joel Snyder for Internet World Mar/April 1994
[ With this issue, Internet World welcomes another columnist to its
roster: Joel M. Snyder. Joel's both a writer and a doer; when he's
not working on networking Russia or X.25 standards in Switzerland,
he's at home in Tucson, Arizona, writing all about TCP/IP, Macintoshes,
DEC, and the Internet. - dpd ]
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Diving into the Internet:
The Trouble With Gopher
by Joel Snyder
"The Internet is the librarian's full employment act of the 1990s"
- Daniel Dern
Ever hear the expression "Better late than never?" When people say that
to me, I have an answer: "who says?" I'm a believer in doing things
right. When it's time to help fix a half-done job, that bothers me. So
when I started to explore the convoluted and confusing world of
Gopherspace, I got excited and upset.
Gopher, for those of you who have been living in a cave for the past two
years, is the brainchild of a group of support folks at the University of
Minnesota. Their original design goals were modest: replace the
cumbersome anonymous FTP system for information retrieval with something
that was friendly, understandable, and usable. Build a campus-wide
information system (CWIS) to help distribute information. That's the
exciting part.
At the University of Minnesota, Gopher was an incredible success. People
could actually find information about things that mattered to them. More
importantly, they could find information without knowing anything about
the conventions of the Internet, Unix, or any other esoteric bit of
computer arcana. That's the exciting part.
Gopher's ideas aren't new. CompuServe, the grand dame of information
services, has had a menu-oriented view of its on-line world for a decade.
And the most powerful concept of Gopher--- its ability to jump from one
Gopher server to another without showing the user any seams in the web of
information resources--- has been part of CompuServe from the beginning.
What's lacking in Gopherspace is something that CompuServe has: an
information architect. Someone who's responsible for making sure that it
all makes sense. That there are overall indices. That users can jump
into the system with some hope that they'll find resources waiting to be
discovered. That the user isn't plunged into total anarchy.
Unfortunately, that's what Gopherspace is today. Anybody can install and
advertise a Gopher. And, you'll discover, lots of geniuses and morons
have. Can we blame the good folks at Minnesota for that? For making
Gopher too easy to install and use? For making it so simple to link the
Gophers of the world together? I don't think so. Think of the Gopher
pioneers as true research scientists. The results of the Minnesota
Gopher team are something that can be used or abused. Gopher is a tool.
Using tools like Gopher to build information systems takes practice.
Right now, there are a lot of amateurs running Gopher servers. That's a
problem.
Look at the typical new Internet user, someone who got lured into it and
uses one of the dozen new "Internet User Guides" as a bible.
These aren't computer folks. They're confused. How to find anything in
the million-plus nodes of the network? Suddenly, they find Gopher. There
it is---a menu-oriented interface to the Internet. Finally. While
drowning in a sea of information and resources, Gopher offers an anchor.
Try and take Gopher away from a new user, and you'll see how important any
anchor, even a bad one, is.
Gopherspace isn't organized. It's assembled. Gopher is a true client
server application. The software you run when you type "gopher" (or click
on the Gopher icon, for you GUI folks) doesn't have any data. It points at
a server, one of hundreds, maybe thousands, on the Internet. You may have
to pick one out yourself, or your system administrator may have selected
one for you as a default.
The top level menu at that first server forms your window on the Internet.
If the maintainer of the server you pointed your client at has been
diligent and thoughtful, you may have a well designed view of some small
chunk of the Internet. Or, you may be pointing at an archive that was
up-to-date when it was created, but hasn't been maintained since. Most
likely, though, you'll find yourself pointing at a server which holds a
small repository of local information and a menu item pointing at "All
Gophers in the World." That menu item is one place where your server ends
and another begins. And it's the most common way for someone to link
their Gopher server into the wild world of Gopherspace.
Certain Gophers specialize in collecting pointers to a particular kind of
information, such as legal information or religion. How can you find the
Gopher maintained by someone with your same interests? Good luck. "All
Gophers in the World" is helpfully organized by the physical location of
the server: states, countries, and continents. That's the same as sorting
books in a library by the publisher. And just as useful.
Some Gopher enthusiasts have jumped in to fight the inevitable entropic
disintegration that the second law of thermodynamics predicts. David
Riggins, for example, has created a Gopher server list organized by
subject. His "Gopher Jewels" list is available via Gopher to cwis.usc.edu
(or anonymous ftp to usc.edu or ftp.einet.net). Other Gopher server
operators (Gopher masters) have made similar efforts.
At the University of Saskatchewan, gopher.usask.ca is a collection of
well-organized pointers to the world of Gopher space. University of
Saskatchewan is also the home of Hytelnet, the world's most ambitious (and
complete!) collection of telnet-able Internet resources. If you like
Gopher, you should also get a copy of Hytelnet. At Rice University,
Prentiss Riddle tries to keep on top of things with a Gopher that merges
directories from other Gophers. Sort of a Gopher of Gophers of Gophers,
all kept at riceinfo.rice.edu.
You could also turn to Veronica and Jughead, tools which let you do a
full-text search of some popular Gopher server menus.
These fine examples are counterbalanced by the truly sublime part of
Gopher space. Check out the legislative information system at
Gopher.cc.utah.edu, where last year's legislation is organized by bill
number or full text search, and nothing in between. And don't miss the
Salt Lake City Police Department's daily reports: "October 17, 1993, 10
PM. Officers were dispatched to the 7-11 after reported gang members had
threatened the clerk claiming to have a gun." Or slip on over to The
Management Archive at chimera.sph.umn.edu (don't these Minnesota people
talk to each other?), which is advertised as "an innovative idea with
considerable potential to improve the flow of ideas, knowledge, and
substantive learning between researchers and practitioners and across the
management academy." It will take a long while for The Management Archive
to achieve its potential.
I don't mean to be the grouch of the Internet. The Minnesota Gopher
implementers have given us a great product. Lots of information
organizers out there are trying to make sense of the world of the
Internet. They're shooting at a fast moving target. Keep that in mind
as you navigate in Gopherspace.
Joel Snyder
[email protected]
- Joel Snyder is a senior partner at Opus One, specializing in
telecommunications and information technology. He spends most of
his time running around the world helping companies with their
networking problems.
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Snyder's Guidelines For Good Gophering
1. Remember that Gophers are microscopic views on the overstuffed
world of the Internet. If you think you're seeing it all, you're
not even close. To find something, you may have to take many
twisty passages, all seemingly alike.
2. Even in the world of Gopher, cross-system index tools like
Veronica, Jughead, and Archie are quite incomplete. There is no
lazy way out of hard digging with your Gopher client.
3. When you find a well-organized place in Gopherspace, make
yourself a note using Gopher's "bookmark" facility
so you can come back. Your personal list of Gopher jewels
is something you'll come back to again and again.
4. Information without organization is a waste of time. If you
think being a Gopher master is for you, make sure you've got the
commitment to keeping your Gopher up to date and accurate.
Otherwise, don't even bother. If you're a Gopher user, remember that
there is no quality assurance on the data you are getting, and there
is no guarantee that what you have is the latest and greatest.
5. When you do find a particularly tasty resource, make sure
that others know about it. Some wonderful resouces are well
hidden on the Internet. If you know about one, share the wealth.
6. Be flexible. Gopher searches are only as good as where you
start. If your strategy isn't working, start somewhere else.
7. Gopherspace is not hierarchical. There is no information architect.
There is no "top" below which everything falls into neat pigeonholes.
There is no guarantee that you can get there from here, or that you're not
going around in circles.
8. When you take information from the Internet, remember that
you owe a debt to those who made it available. Repay your debt
by making your own contribution. Ask your local Gopher master;
he or she will probably be happy to accept a donation of time to
help organize, update, index, and improve the system.
