Yesterday, I began a thread on 4channel's technology board /g/.
As of writing this post it has over 60 replies.
It seems that it is not just me who finds the Gopher protocol
to be fascinating.
There are those, like me, who had never used nor even heard of
Gopher until recently.
And there are those who are already familiar with gopherspace.
Overall I am pleased that there is interest in this
minimalistic technology we call the Gopher protocol.
I was sure that it was not just me, and that turns out to be
the case.
There is, of course, something rather subversive about the
intentionally minimalistic protocol in its almost
antogonistic priciples, relative to that of the modern
World Wide Web.
I'm not the first to observe the increasing levels of
technological complexity on the modern web, and the
undermining of democratic media in the increasing oligopily
online.
Gopherspace, in its current form, is an almost ironic return
to this democracy, and this is built into the intentionally
minimalistic design of the protocol itself, which would in
theory help preserve its democtratised nature.
And therefore one might conclude that minimlalism promotes
democracy and democracy is the least bad system we have.
I myself have learned more about gopherspace by simply
reading replies. I've seen interesting goperholes which I
was not previously aware of, as well as more software
applications for the browsing and serving of the gopher
protocol.
I have also seen discussion of security as it applies to
gopher, which is always a relevant topic.
My plans for the future regarding this phlog, in my mind,
are as follows:
- Host my own domain with a relevant domain name.
- Create a gopher-based e-mail address to allow contact.
- Write more phlog posts.
It is unfortunate to see, however, a little antagonism
between the users of the 1436chan gopherhole toward /g/.
Thankfully though, the users of that community do not have
any real power to keep the gates of gopherspace, and so can
safely be ignored.
In fact it was the creator of 1436chan himself who first
linked to the gopher chan.
In any case, I will continue to monitor the discussion and
try to keep a record of relevant links and information so
that future threads can be created.
