article-tgtimes-national-library-medecine.mw - tgtimes - The Gopher Times
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       article-tgtimes-national-library-medecine.mw (2906B)
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            1 .SH tgtimes
            2 Gopher for Medical Research
            3 .2C 50v
            4 .
            5 .PP
            6 The National Institute of Health is well used to the Gopher protocol,
            7 for it used it as a way to publish medical documentation. You named
            8 it: \fIPubMed\fR itself have been delivering documents through Gopher:
            9 .
           10 .IP "Phone books"
           11 with name, phone number and e-mail addresses of those willing to submit it,
           12 .
           13 .IP "Images"
           14 like weathermaps,
           15 .
           16 .IP "Audio"
           17 such as 1992 presidential debates,
           18 .
           19 .IP "Books"
           20 and all kind of publcations, also proposed to users as a way to publish their own content,
           21 .
           22 .IP "Videos"
           23 short ones, but also on-demand movies!
           24 .
           25 .IP "Telnet"
           26 interfaces with login and password,
           27 .
           28 .IP "Search engines"
           29 For browsing this entire content.
           30 .
           31 .PP
           32 The technical bulletin of March-April 1994 reveals as much.
           33 While 1994 does not sounds like a world gifted with nowadays unlimited technology, equivalents to modern tools, with less bells and less whistles, were already widespread among providers, but much less used as they are today:
           34 .
           35 .IP "Spotify"
           36 were files through Gopher.
           37 .
           38 .IP "Netflix"
           39 were files through Gopher.
           40 .
           41 .IP "PubMed, ResearchGate"
           42 were files through Gopher.
           43 .
           44 .IP "Instagram"
           45 were files through Gopher.
           46 .
           47 .IP "Facebook"
           48 were publication as files through Gopher.
           49 .
           50 .IP "Amazon Kindle"
           51 were text files through Gopher.
           52 .
           53 .IP "Office365"
           54 were telnet interactive session, or WordStar, PostScript, and ASCII
           55 files through Gopher.
           56 .
           57 .IP "Google"
           58 was either gopher search, or interactive telnet sessions, with
           59 sometimes powerful query languages, permitting to filter the result
           60 held in the databases: \fISearching for references about Italians
           61 with AIDS that are not indexed with ITALY (MH)\fR
           62 .
           63 .PP
           64 This showcases that a lot of thing declared as \fIpossible today
           65 thank to the advances of technology\fR were available since as early
           66 as 1994. With much less bells and much less whistles. With much less
           67 bandwidth for everyone, but existing bandwidth much less used as
           68 well.
           69 .
           70 .PP
           71 Interactive database querying languages would look a bit uninviting,
           72 and TurboGopher (showcased in the document) has not all the font,
           73 layout, media integration features of modern day web browsers.
           74 .
           75 .PP
           76 Under that perspective, the race to technology looks like not a quest
           77 for new use-cases, but taking what was possible in the early days to
           78 in a crude format and only to some initiated, to the masses, in an
           79 inviting layout, packed onto small, shiny objects that fit on a mere
           80 pocket.
           81 .
           82 .FS
           83 https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/archive/nlm_technical_bulletin_march_april_1994.pdf
           84 .FE
           85 .
           86 .PP
           87 One year later, the Gopher for Science and Medecine project still is
           88 blown at full steam, as the National Library of Medecine publishes
           89 a bibliography for setting-up gopher servers for collaborating on
           90 specific medical topics.
           91 .
           92 .QP
           93 Developing a subject-specific Gopher at the National Library of Medicine
           94 .
           95 .FS
           96 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7599590/
           97 .FE