SLUMMING IN GOPHER SPACE

Leif Harmsen emails from London to ask if we've gone
slumming in gopher space.  Seems that since the development
of Netscape, the gopher has been abandoned and, like a
telematic post-cursor of those empty American inner cities
before it, everyone rushes out to the suburbs of the Web
with its homepages plunked down on green biologic lawns
like coast- to-coast Century 21 "For Sale" signs.

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| Internet Gopher Information Client v2.0.13               |
|                     Root gopher server: gopher.slums.net |
|                                                          |
| --> 1. Pentagon Plans to Atomize the USSR/               |
|     2. How to Program in BASIC/                          |
|     3. Academic Departments/                             |
|     4. ASCII Art of Cows/                                |
|     5. Obsolete Computing Services/                      |
|     6. 1992 Yukon Telephone Directory/                   |
|     7. One or Two Other Internet Resources/              |
|     8. Boycott the WWW! Save Precious Bandwidth!/        |
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| Press ? for Help, q to Quit                              |
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I never liked Gopher much anyway, too passive and archival
and information-serious, but I check it out, and it's true.
You float down empty pixel hallways of data circa 1993,
tomes sometimes fall off unattended shelves, the turnstiles
are covered with guck from gallium arsenate in its decaying
stage, the registration desk stands empty with signs
everywhere of hasty flight, and whirpool storms of dust
balls swirl through the digital air.  Sort of like the Texas
panhandle after the tornado, when you peek your head out of
the basement, squinting at the Day of the Living Dead
sunlight, the land is empty from horizon to horizon, and you
just don't know whether you're at the end of all things or
the beginning again and again of the big rebuilding.
Vectoring through the vacant storage vaults of the Gopher,
no one is around, you can hear your voice echo as it lazily
accelerates its sonic way through the matrix, but like a
good cyber-citizen who wants to stay alive for one last
go-round on the mall strips of the Web, you wear your hard
hat as protection against falling data beams.

I'm outta here.

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Arthur & Marilouise Kroker. Hacking The Future, Stories For
The Flesh-Eating 90s. Montreal: New World Perspectives, 1996
p. 89-91
http://hdl.handle.net/1828/7133