The command line really? And using gopher in 2018? Are we just nuts or what?
Or maybe not. Early in the 90's, I got turned on to UNIX by none other than the man himself, .mil
or 'mil' for short. This opened up a new world for me - almost all of my experience in the
shell/cli centered around an old TI99, or a Tandy computer and farting around on a library
computer putzing around on pre-gopher terminals that only hooked up to another library somewhere.
As usually, we figured out the gaming part pretty quickly back in the 80's and 'Scortched Earth'
was a hot one - in fact, this was our first 'network game'.
Back then ya'll, it was real. The 'Webs' weren't the 'Interwebs' yet, not in the way we know them
today. Then in the 90's, using my '.mil' account, I discovered chat channels via the all too way
secure utility we know and love, telnet. The first one I used was 'The Coffee House', located at
purdue.edu on port 2222. Back in those days, I picked the 'uber elite name', werewolf, to meet
some hot Indiana chicks that would later come down to our 'lair' in good old Charleston, SC. Back
then, internet dating meant investing, and we didn't have gopher until the mid-90's, so you had no
chance to know what someone looked like. Regardless, I was in love: both with UNIX and Indiana
women (both of which I still have to this day).
So why now?
Come one, is this some millenial hipster wet dream or something? Are they done with quaint
typewriter sessions on the street using an old Remington Travelwriter and modernly aged paper -
and now they want gopher?
No ... I don't think so, it's bigger than that. There is more too it than some Seattle postpunk
net nostalgia going on here. People are tired of a world defined by apps, 'smart phones' that are
getting harder to root (and those that self update without your permies) and the giggle-flash of
our overly VR'd culture (get your cardboard goggles out.) Even back in the day, when we first saw
Max Headrom (is that spelled right? and the mothertrucker was hocking Cokes?), we knew that the
internets and technology had taken a wrong turn.
The greatest defining feature of the Net is the ability to promote unfettered ideas at the speed
of light (well now, back in the day, it was copper and whatever ohm impedance rating you had on
the line). What could be more American than that, right?
So yeah ... gopher.
As silly as it was, as stupid as it seemed to me at the time, the gopher protocol was going to be
the 'back to basics' solution that the programming/computer community needed to make it through
these times of 'dark censorship'. And speaking of dark, it's right there - unlike the murky
waters of the 'dark web'. Anyone can get here, anyone can read what I'm writing and technically,
anyone that cares enough to learn the way in which we do things (and believe me, the bar is not
that high and the goal post, that far), can be here - reading this now;
.. like you.
You don't have to be some Berkely tofu (enhanced with tamari and seasame sauce) eating, Stallman
worshiper making "illegal" over watted FM radio transmitters with a Wildcat BBS on dialup as your
main form of getting 'the message' out, you just need to be humble enough to learn.
Freedom ... as that cheeky song goes, isn't free.
And the fee, isn't really 'knowledge' only, per sey, but knowlege with experience.
Look, I'm a dumbass and I landed a job at (never a straight answer), so if anyone can do it, you
can - you!
Welcome back, or as the hippies say, 'Welcome Home' - embrace the CLI, it's not about suck (or
even suckless - whatever that means), it's about taking charge of your online experience and using
it to enhance your world - yours! Not anyone elses ... yours.
So yes, we need gopher, we need shell scripts and first and foremost, we need you to be you. So
you the f*ck up and make it happen.
And make your life easier with alias why don't yah (double ententree implied).
