Original at :
https://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html
----------------------------------------------------
Why is Gopher Still Relevant?
Cameron Kaiser, from the Overbite Project
Most people who "get" Gopher are already using it and instinctively
understand why Gopher is still useful and handy. On the other hand, people
who inhabit the Web generation after Gopher's decline only see Gopherspace
as a prototype Web or a historical curiosity, not a world in its own right
-- and more to the point, being only such a "prototype," there is the wide
belief that Gopher plays no relevant role in today's Internet and is
therefore unnecessary. This has led to many regrettable consequences, such
as the neglect of servers and clients, or even active removal of support.
However, there is much to be gained from a heterogeneous network
environment where there are multiple methods of information access, and
while the Web will confidently remain the primary means of Internet
information dissemination, there continues to be a role for Gopher-based
resources even in this modern age. Gopher and the Web can, and should,
continue to coexist.
The misconception that the modern renaissance of Gopherspace is simply a
reaction to "Web overload" is unfortunately often repeated and, while
superficially true, demonstrates a distinct lack of insight. From a purely
interface perspective, there is no question that Gopher could be entirely
"subsumed" under the Web (technical differences to be discussed
presently). Very simple HTML menus and careful attention to hierarchy
would yield an experience very much like a Gopher menu, and some have done
exactly that as a deliberate protest against the sensory overload of
modern Web 2.0.
Gopher, however, is more than a confederated affiliation of networks with
goals of minimalism; rather, Gopher is a mind-set on making structure out
of chaos. On the Web, even if such a group of confederated webmasters
existed, it requires their active and willful participation to maintain
such a hierarchical style and the seamlessness of that joint interface
breaks down abruptly as soon as one leaves for another page. Within
Gopherspace, all Gophers work the same way and all Gophers organize
themselves around similar menus and interface conceits. It is not only
easy and fast to create gopher content in this structured and organized
way, it is mandatory by its nature. Resulting from this mandate is the
ability for users to navigate every Gopher installation in the same way
they navigated the one they came from, and the next one they will go to.
Just like it had been envisioned by its creators, Gopher takes the strict
hierarchical nature of a file tree or FTP and turns it into a friendlier
format that still gives the fast and predictable responses that they would
get by simply browsing their hard drive. As an important consequence, by
divorcing interface from information, Gopher sites stand and shine on the
strength of their content and not the glitz of their bling.
Furthermore, Gopher represents the ability to bring an interconnected
browsing experience to low-computing-power environments. Rather than the
expense of large hosting power and bandwidth, Gopher uses an inexpensive
protocol to serve and a trivial menuing format to parse, making it
cost-effective for both client and server. Gopher sites can be hosted and
downloaded effectively on bandwidth-constrained networks such as dialup
and even low-speed wireless, and clients require little more than a TCP
stack and minimal client software to navigate them. In an environment
where there are cries for "green computing" and "green data centres,"
along with large-scale media attention on emerging technology markets in
developing nations and the proliferation of wireless technology with
limited CPU and memory, it is hypocritical to this author why an
established protocol such as Gopher would be bypassed for continued
reliance on inefficient programming paradigms and expensive protocols.
Indeed, this sort of network doublethink has wrought large, unwieldy
solutions such as WAP, a dramatic irony, since in the case of many
low-power devices such as consumer mobile phones, the menu format used on
them is nearly completely analogous to what Gopher already offered over a
decade earlier. More to the point, few in that market segment support the
breadth of WAP, and those that can simply use a regular Web browser
instead.
Finally, if Web and gopher can coexist in the client's purview, they can
also exist in the server's. HTML can be served by both gopher servers and
web servers, or a Gopher menu can be clothed in CSS, translated to HTML,
and given to a web browser (and in its native form to a Gopher client).
This approach yields a natural and highly elegant consequence: if you
don't want to choose strictly one way or the other to communicate to your
users, choose neither and offer them both a structured low-bandwidth
approach or a higher-bandwidth Web view, built from the same content. The
precedent of a single serving solution offering both to both clients has
been in existence since the early days of the Web with tools such as GN,
and today with more modern implementations such as pygopherd. Gopher menus
are so trivial to parse that they can easily be HTML-ified with simple
scripts and act as the basis for both morphs; what's more, their
data-oriented approach means they require little work to construct and
maintain, and content creation in general becomes simple and quick with
the interface step already taken care of. Plus, many servers easily
generate dynamic gopher menus with built-in executable support, providing
the interactive nature demanded by many modern applications while still
fitting into Gopher's hierarchical format, and virtually all modern Gopher
servers can aggregate links to Web content to forge bidirectional
connections.
Modern Gopherspace represents the next and greatest way for alternative
information access, and the new generation of Gopher maintainers
demonstrate a marked grassroots desire for a purer way to get to
high-quality resources. Not simply nostalgia for the "way it used to be,"
modern Gopherspace is a distinctly different population than in the mid
1990s when it flourished, yet one on which modern services can still be
found, from news and weather to search engines, personal pages, "phlogs"
and file archives. It would be remiss to dismissively say Gopher was
killed by the Web, when in fact the Web and Gopher can live in their
distinct spheres and each contribute to the other. With the modern
computing emphasis on interoperability, heterogeneity and economy, Gopher
continues to offer much to the modern user, as well as in terms of
content, accessibility and inexpensiveness. Even now clearly as second
fiddle to the World Wide Web, Gopher still remains relevant. -- Cameron
Kaiser
Gopher links to try
All known gopher servers (robot-listed)
Search Gopherspace with Veronica-2
New Gopher servers since 1999 (self-listed)
Back to the Overbite Project main page
