# Subscribing to Gemini pages

As we all know, our technology tends to become increasingly complex. New technical solutions create new needs. We meet these needs, at least supposedly, by further expanding the technical solution, combining it with other solutions or creating a further abstraction that promises us easier access to things that from now on we regard as black boxes, or perhaps even sometimes as magic.

Or we throw away the technology that has degenerated or is no longer up to date. And start developing a more "modern" solution in line with the current zeitgeist, adapted to the state of the art of related technological fields and equipped with new ideas.

Without wanting to drift any further into the realms of technological philosophy, the hope remains that we don't always "need" the next "better", "faster" or however supposedly positively proven solution. Not least because of the idea of sustainability and ultimately ecological responsibility.

I am also writing these lines with regard to technologies such as Gopher and Gemini. In fact, I am referring specifically to the Gemini companion specifications "Subscribing to Gemini pages", see [1]. There, a convention is described by which "Gemini clients can 'subscribe' to a regularly updated Gemini page (such as the index page of a gemlog) even in the absence of a full-fledged syndication technology like Atom or RSS."

Now Atom, for example, is by no means the pinnacle of degenerate technology and offers absolutely valid use cases for many requirements, but even here you have to admit that AtomPub (see [2]) is one the one side a wonderful way to manage feeds (and actually everything that can be managed with CRUD operations) based on the REST principle and can be combined very nicely with HTTP, but on the other side it is very often only used to return an ASF file (see [3]) with the help of HTTP GET.

Ultimately, technologies cannot be categorised in general terms such as "bad" or "good". Rather, it is about requirements and which technologies best fulfil certain requirements. In the case of the possibility of subscribing Gemini pages described in [1], it must of course be recognised that this solution is far behind what could be done with Atom, for example. But for everyday "home use", the solution is certainly sufficient and impresses with its simplicity and the resulting elegance.

=> gemini://geminiprotocol.net/docs/companion/subscription.gmi  [1] Subscribing to Gemini pages
=> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5023        [2] The Atom Publishing Protocol
=> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4287        [2] The Atom Syndication Format

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