The Web may have won, but Gopher tunnels on From: https://web.archive.org/web/20210308090407/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/11/the-web-may-have-won-but-gopher-tunnels-on/ Remember Gopher? The protocol predated the Web, and a hardy band of ... by Nate Anderson - Nov 4, 2009 12:15 pm UTC gopher n. 1. Any of various short tailed, burrowing mammals of the family Geomyidae, of North America. 2. (Amer. colloq.) Native or inhabitant of Minnesota: the Gopher State. 3. (Amer. colloq.) One who runs errands, does odd-jobs, fetches or delivers documents for office staff. 4. (computer tech.) software following a simple protocol for burrowing through a TCP/IP internet. -From RFC 1436 describing Gopher Minnesota is not a proud place—how else to explain the fact that it voluntarily bills itself the "Gopher State" and has as its main university mascot an appallingly bucktoothed rodent known as a "golden gopher"? So it was no surprise that when University of Minnesota researchers developed an early protocol for organizing and sharing documents over the Internet, they named it "gopher." The initial version of the protocol appeared in 1991; by 1993, it had been codified as a Request for Comment (RFC 1436) that laid out the protocol in some detail. According to the RFC, gopher was designed as a client-server protocol running over TCP/IP. Much lighter than HTTP and HTML, gopher provided essentially two options: menus and documents, both of which were accessed through port 70. The system was initially text-based, though basic image serving ability came later. There was no decorative markup for menu pages, which all looked basically (and boringly) the same; on the other hand, gopher was quick and consistent. gopher_FF.png It was also on the way out pretty quickly. I used it in 1994 during my first year in college, but even there it coexisted with HTML (and the new Mosaic "Web browser"). HTML quickly came to dominate, gopher servers migrated onto the Web, and search engines like Google eventually replaced the arcane gopher search engines like Archie, VERONICA, and JUGHEAD (Veronica-2 continues to monitor gopherspace). Attempts to improve Gopher did little to stop the weaving of the Web. University of Minnesota computer scientists developed the Gopher+ protocol in the summer of 1993 as a way to "summon new capabilities to bridge the most keenly felt shortcomings of the venerable old Gopher." Gopher+ was backwards compatible with Gopher, but the protocol's popularity was waning, and Gopher+ never took off (it never achieved RFC status, either). But, like its namesake, Gopher was hard to kill. As late as 2000-2001, backers like Bjorn Karger were writing the "Gopher Manifesto" and arguing that a return to gopher would be a return to the purity of the early Internet. "No graphic design means its the ideal navigable interface, a hypertext Eden," wrote Karger. "It gives simplified usage for sight-impaired users, same contents for wired/wiredless, and requires no capital investments in layout and 'design.' Gopher is real—and it was fully functional in 1992, even without advertisements!" This sense of gopher as an Edenic protocol of innocence (in comparison to HTML, the protocol of commerce and experience) gave power to the calls for its resurrection. Karger features a bit of reminiscence from one Lawrence Rhodes, whose description of using the protocol is telling: "'Point your Gopher to...' I remember getting excited when almost anything followed these words," said Rhodes. "It was a sign of progress. Or of the impending state of information connectedness we all now experience. Now it seems so quaint. I miss it so not for the underpinning technology (which may or may not have been superior) but for the feeling that the world of information technology, indeed the world itself, was advancing rapidly enough to allow the common man access to the world's great storehouses of data. Of course, in retrospect, I suppose if I had thought about the common man's indefatigable hunger for porn and nonstop commerce and the myriad other forms of bad taste, I would have seen the dangers of the banal. Indeed Gopher represented a simpler, more naive time." This isn't a view shared by all Gopher enthusiasts, though. Cameron Kaiser is a programmer on the Overbite Project, which brings better Gopher support to Firefox versions 2 and 3. When he writes about the relevance of Gopher in a Web world, he rejects the nostalgia for a "simpler time." "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," he writes. Instead, Gopher's advantages lie in the structure that its simple menu-based interface imposes on content. "Gopher is a mind-set on making structure out of chaos," says Kaiser. "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." As is evident from their manifestos, neither Kaiser nor Karger have much time for "design," which always threatens to overshadow "content." Unfortunately for the Gopherphile, Gopherspace has been stripped of much of its content; even the "mother Gopher" at the University of Minnesota has been shuttered. Gopher tools Gopher hasn't wholly died, though, and a bit of poking around in Gopher holes shows that Gopher-based tools are still being actively developed. First, though, you'll need some way to browse Gopher servers. The easiest cross-platform tool is Firefox, which continues to support Gopher browsing. This is not without controversy; a bug request filed back in 2007 wants to "lessen attack vectors by removing Gopher protocol support." Two years later, however, Firefox continues to support the protocol. The Overbite project, not satisfied with this implementation, has written its own Firefox extension to replace the default Gopher support with something more robust. Standalone, modern gopher clients are tough to come by, but you can download older programs at the HAL 3000 archive. For the text-mode-inclined, most Telnet clients can display Gopher's basic output, and browsers like Lynx are a perfect match for Gopher's textual nature. terminal_gopher.jpg Finally, to play around with Gopher without installing a client, Floodgap Systems runs a free Gopher proxy that renders Gopher pages as HTML files and allows for seamless Gopher browsing. Now, what can you do? Gopher's good times You can browse the text and images on Gopher servers, of course, which contain everything from Python code to "glog" (Gopher log) entries. You can browse a Gopher server running on a Windows 7 machine with 20MB of RAM. You can browse a UK server with a Swedish domain name. gopherchan.png Or you can throw caution to the wind and browse 4chan, of all things, through Gopher. The notorious /b/ discussion board, home to both the Anonymous movement and the sort of pictures that might send your mother to the hospital, is accessible through Port 70's Gopherchan. Someone at Floodgap has also built a Twitter browser that can pull any user's tweets into a Gopher page so... there's that, too. Basically, it's the Web without commercial users, graphic design, Flash video, cookies, and popup windows—and, when put that way, it's possible to see why Gopher's devotees appreciate the stark simplicity of the protocol. On the other hand, a bit of time spent poking around in Gopherspace offers a powerful reminder that most of the world has moved on, leaving Gopher in its hole. 49 Reader Comments 1. AxMi-24Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius Wed Nov 04, 2009 7:29 am quote: On the other hand, a bit of time spent poking around in Gopherspace offers a powerful reminder that most of the world has moved on, leaving Gopher in its hole. Yeay for advanced flash sites. They are truly awesome and provide a lot of information in an easy to use way. It would be much nicer if the progress was something positive in this case 9621 posts | reg. Jan 30, 2006 2. Jeff3FArs Tribunus Angusticlaviuset Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 7:42 am Gopher had a good run, but for me Lynx ate the Gopher... 6127 posts | reg. Nov 18, 2002 3. dieswaytoofastSeniorius Lurkius Wed Nov 04, 2009 7:42 am New Poster And for a bit of history -> amongst the many (oh *so* many!) reasons that the Gopher didn't quite take off was the second GopherCon - yes, there were such things - when U Minn. revealed their protocol licensing scheme. It was big, complicated, but about the only really understandable part was you had to pay them to set up a server. Yes, there were all sorts of exemptions and out-clauses, but the bottom line was that the protocol was encumbered. The sense of deflation was almost palpable.... 2 posts | reg. Nov 4, 2009 4. Bird SkullArs Praetorian Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:03 am I can see why IT developers picked the likeness of a gopher. The resemblance is uncanny. 427 posts | reg. Feb 13, 2009 5. Banzai51Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:08 am The misplaced nostalgia is frightening. Gopher was fun while it lasted, but WWW was better in every way. It allowed more connectivity and creativity than Gopher. Those rejecting design are insane. There are plenty of ways to keep your design simple yet still nice to look at and easy to navigate. For those misguided nostalgia buffs, apparently they don't remember Gopher nor the early days of WWW. WWW was everything they remember Gopher to be, there was porn on both, and the banal and commercial aspects would have come to any protocol that got widely popular. What they really pine for are the days when only the "technology elite" (as they would consider themselves, natch) were on the internet, ahead of the curve. Now everyone is up to speed, they've lost their lofty perch, and finding that new edge will take more work than they want to exert. Now, being on the internet isn't enough for cred, you have to actually create content for that "internet cred." Popularity lowers the barrier to entry as I'm sure the folks over at The Well can readily understand. 7954 posts | reg. Feb 16, 2001 6. hobgoblinArs Tribunus Angusticlavius Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:15 am i guess one option is to browse the web with CCS turned off. however, the text input box of the arstechnica page then becomes somewhat small... 9070 posts | reg. Apr 16, 2004 7. ㅁboySeniorius Lurkius Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:46 am Archie was an FTP search engine, not gopher. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_search_engine 22 posts | reg. Sep 15, 2009 8. gavdanaSeniorius Lurkius Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:50 am New Poster Nate, thanks for the great article. I appreciate the article's sentiment, coming from a guy who still misses the community BBS scene. 1 post | reg. Nov 4, 2009 9. mikepaulArs Scholae Palatinae Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:59 am Geeze, I'm getting paranoid. All I could think of is terrorists using this for communication since it's so... underground... 960 posts | reg. Mar 17, 2005 10. rduncan10Ars Centurion Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:00 am You think there would still be a place for something like Gopher. The highly structured content-driven system might work better on my cell phone screen than most web pages do (and they would cost a lot less to download then all those images). In some ways this seems to be the impetuous behind Twitter (or even RSS). Compare it to, say, the Facebook wall. Twitter is content stripped of design. Maybe a Gopher successor could fill a similar role for other types of content. And if the anti-Net-neutrality people get there way, we might all be stuck using Gopher. It might be the only thing that fits once big media gets their hands on the rest of the bandwidth. 206 posts | reg. Nov 4, 2009 11. aquasubArs Scholae Palatinae Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:04 am quote: "'Point your Gopher to...' I remember getting excited when almost anything followed these words," said Rhodes. "It was a sign of progress. Or of the impending state of information connectedness we all now experience. Now it seems so quaint. I miss it so not for the underpinning technology (which may or may not have been superior) but for the feeling that the world of information technology, indeed the world itself, was advancing rapidly enough to allow the common man access to the world's great storehouses of data. Of course, in retrospect, I suppose if I had thought about the common man's indefatigable hunger for porn and nonstop commerce and the myriad other forms of bad taste, I would have seen the dangers of the banal. Indeed Gopher represented a simpler, more naive time." It is a good thing the world has moved on past arrogant douchebags like this guy. 913 posts | reg. Aug 5, 2008 12. lmasantiSmack-Fu Master, in training Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:08 am quote: "So it was no surprise that, when University of Minnesota researchers developed an early protocol for organizing and sharing documents over the Internet, they named it "gopher."" In behalf of the creators of the protocol's name, there is a Latin abbreviation, commonly used in "serious" books, articles and papers: "cfr." pronounced "confer," translated as "go to see." It is used as a [paper] hiperlink: you are speaking of something and the author send you to "cfr." (go to see) other material. 66 posts | reg. Oct 23, 2009 13. kakaoSeniorius Lurkius Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:09 am quote: in comparison to HTML, the protocol of commerce and experience Just for the record HTML is not a protocol. 42 posts | reg. Mar 10, 2005 14. SchwanzArs Praefectuset Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:20 am quote: Originally posted by lmasanti: quote: "So it was no surprise that, when University of Minnesota researchers developed an early protocol for organizing and sharing documents over the Internet, they named it "gopher."" In behalf of the creators of the protocol's name, there is a Latin abbreviation, commonly used in "serious" books, articles and papers: "cfr." pronounced "confer," translated as "go to see." It is used as a [paper] hiperlink: you are speaking of something and the author send you to "cfr." (go to see) other material. uh, no. It was because of Goldy Gopher. 5899 posts | reg. May 1, 2001 15. MaizeAndBlueArs Legatus Legioniset Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:24 am quote: Originally posted by dieswaytoofast: And for a bit of history -> amongst the many (oh *so* many!) reasons that the Gopher didn't quite take off was the second GopherCon - yes, there were such things - when U Minn. revealed their protocol licensing scheme. It was big, complicated, but about the only really understandable part was you had to pay them to set up a server. Yes, there were all sorts of exemptions and out-clauses, but the bottom line was that the protocol was encumbered. The sense of deflation was almost palpable.... The ironic thing is that Gopher was developed on the side, not by researchers in the computer science department, but by a couple of programmers in the computing services department (in Hypercard of all things). But once it started to take off the higher ups noticed, and quickly tried to figure out how to squeeze it for all it was worth (hence, GopherCon). Problem was, WWW was coming out at the same time, and was superior in at least one way - being able to type in URL's and start anywhere - that Gopher couldn't match. 26902 posts | reg. Oct 27, 2003 16. clank75Ars Scholae Palatinae Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:25 am quote: Originally posted by Schwanz: quote: Originally posted by lmasanti: quote: "So it was no surprise that, when University of Minnesota researchers developed an early protocol for organizing and sharing documents over the Internet, they named it "gopher."" In behalf of the creators of the protocol's name, there is a Latin abbreviation, commonly used in "serious" books, articles and papers: "cfr." pronounced "confer," translated as "go to see." It is used as a [paper] hiperlink: you are speaking of something and the author send you to "cfr." (go to see) other material. uh, no. It was because of Goldy Gopher. The popular myth when I was using it was that it was because you would use it to go for information (i.e. you'd Gopher it) Brought back some happy memories, anyway... 1035 posts | reg. Jan 24, 2005 17. MaizeAndBlueArs Legatus Legioniset Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:25 am quote: Originally posted by Schwanz: quote: Originally posted by lmasanti: quote: "So it was no surprise that, when University of Minnesota researchers developed an early protocol for organizing and sharing documents over the Internet, they named it "gopher."" In behalf of the creators of the protocol's name, there is a Latin abbreviation, commonly used in "serious" books, articles and papers: "cfr." pronounced "confer," translated as "go to see." It is used as a [paper] hiperlink: you are speaking of something and the author send you to "cfr." (go to see) other material. uh, no. It was because of Goldy Gopher. The University of Minnesota mascot. It's not for nothing that the other Big Ten schools, when they had Gopher servers, actually named them after other animals. 26902 posts | reg. Oct 27, 2003 18. Nate AndersonArs Tribunus Militumet Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:51 am quote: Originally posted by ㅁboy: Archie was an FTP search engine, not gopher. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_search_engine Fixed, thanks. 2189 posts | reg. Nov 18, 2005 19. dicaxArs Centurion Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:14 am wow...4chan is even awesomer with gopher. So many useless .gifs... 311 posts | reg. Jun 19, 2002 20. ayelaoArs Scholae Palatinae Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:14 am quote: Originally posted by aquasub: It is a good thing the world has moved on past arrogant douchebags like this guy. And now if only the world would move past pointless childish namecalling. I think the subtext of his statement is that he is disheartened that the dissemination of information has moved from a more academic role to a commercial one. While he may have chosen borderline hyperbolic statements regarding the "common man," it doesn't mean it's an entirely inaccurate depiction. Access to and aggregation of information are becoming more commercialised. To make a slightly absurd analogy: I come to Ars Technica for articles such as John Siracusa's Mac OS X reviews/insights, Jon Stokes' insights and Peter Bright's occasional Windows reviews/insights. This, coupled with the fact that the comments rarely digress into a "FIRST" and "+1"/"++" nature, is the reason why I remain here. However, with the ever increasing invasiveness of the ads -- the fly-out or the full screen ads that have become more and more prevalent -- it certainly detracts from the core reasons I have enjoyed the site over the years. In keeping with my analogy, I interpreted his statement as being disheartened that the quality of information to advertising/PR ratio is tipping in favour of advertising. This comment was edited by ayelao on November 04, 2009 15:33 827 posts | reg. May 4, 2005 21. EdzoArs Praefectuset Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:34 am quote: Originally posted by mikepaul: Geeze, I'm getting paranoid. All I could think of is terrorists using this for communication since it's so... underground... Not that I want to give them any ideas, but if there was an internet relic that would seem tailor made for them, it would be Hotline. At least based on what I remember of it. In fact, the Wiki on it says that the company went under after the venture capital funds pulled out after 9/11. 4335 posts | reg. Jul 7, 2006 23. fferitt25Ars Praefectus Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:03 am @Nate - quote: You can browse a Gopher server running on a Windows 7 machine with 20GB of RAM. The alst time I checked... quote: 20,135,936 bytes of RAM ...is equal to roughly 20MB NOT 20GB. That's a significant discrepency someplace that might need correcting. 4145 posts | reg. Apr 24, 2007 24. kennedyeArs Legatus Legioniset Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:03 am I can't find this article on any WAIS servers. 20279 posts | reg. Apr 19, 2001 25. mathrockbrockArs Tribunus Militum Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:09 am quote: Originally posted by TheSpike: Problem was, WWW was coming out at the same time, and was superior in at least one way - being able to type in URL's and start anywhere - that Gopher couldn't match. Apparently that's fixed since the gopher links in the article worked fine for me in Firefox. I guess you were referring to old standalone gopher clients? Anyway, I like it, but then again I always liked FTP. Gopher just seems slightly prettier, or more navigable at least. Sure HTTP is awesome in some ways, but I'm getting awfully sick of trying to find game or movie info and learning that the only source is the publisher's flash-intro-laden website with "xtreme" background music and whooshing flyout menus. Maybe I should just keep a copy of Lynx handy... 1800 posts | reg. Mar 15, 2005 26. MaizeAndBlueArs Legatus Legioniset Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:17 am quote: Originally posted by mathrockbrock: quote: Originally posted by TheSpike: Problem was, WWW was coming out at the same time, and was superior in at least one way - being able to type in URL's and start anywhere - that Gopher couldn't match. Apparently that's fixed since the gopher links in the article worked fine for me in Firefox. I guess you were referring to old standalone gopher clients? I was. The old gopher network was pretty much hardwired - I recall having to navigate to big gopher home pages to find things. It wasn't bad for what it was, but it was highly centralized, and not particularly open. To put it another way, it was developed on campus before all students were automatically given email accounts, and before the dorms were wired for net access. 26902 posts | reg. Oct 27, 2003 27. fferitt25Ars Praefectus Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:27 am quote: Originally posted by Edzo: quote: Originally posted by mikepaul: Geeze, I'm getting paranoid. All I could think of is terrorists using this for communication since it's so... underground... Not that I want to give them any ideas, but if there was an internet relic that would seem tailor made for them, it would be Hotline. At least based on what I remember of it. In fact, the Wiki on it says that the company went under after the venture capital funds pulled out after 9/11. Hotline development continued until 2003 after HostSprings bought the rights from Hotline Communications. As for the terrorism network stuff - yeah it's possible - but not very effective. They'd have to maintain a running hotline server instance. And who knows hwat modern network protocols are in place that would hinder the usability of somehting that hasn't been kept up with for 6-7 years. Just found a copy of a Client and installed it - launched it - tried to access some old servers. Nothing - all seem to be down. But it was also throwing up some Errors. So unless these 'would-be' terrorists spend some time and energy grabbing the source code and updating the software to to fix the Errors and modernize the code - they're probably better off with an SSL or VNC connection. Much easier to deal with. And a hell of a lot more secure. quote: I was. The old gopher network was pretty much hardwired - I recall having to navigate to big gopher home pages to find things. It wasn't bad for what it was, but it was highly centralized, and not particularly open. To put it another way, it was developed on campus before all students were automatically given email accounts, and before the dorms were wired for net access. That reminds me of the old Prodigy - AOL - CompuServe Stand-alone Community Hubs on dial up in the late 80s early 90s. This comment was edited by fferitt25 on November 04, 2009 16:34 4145 posts | reg. Apr 24, 2007 28. Nate AndersonArs Tribunus Militumet Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:28 am quote: Originally posted by fferitt25: @Nate - quote: You can browse a Gopher server running on a Windows 7 machine with 20GB of RAM. The alst time I checked... quote: 20,135,936 bytes of RAM ...is equal to roughly 20MB NOT 20GB. That's a significant discrepency someplace that might need correcting. Odd--when I looked at that yesterday, I was quite sure that the number began with 19. I wonder if it was changed? At any rate, I changed it. 2189 posts | reg. Nov 18, 2005 29. Yuhong baoArs Tribunus Militum Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:47 am "a bug request filed back in 2007 wants to "lessen attack vectors by removing Gopher protocol support." " And indeed IE did exactly this back in 2002. Actually, they at first didn't completely remove it, but just disable it, but I think IE 7 completely removed it. This comment was edited by Yuhong bao on November 04, 2009 17:06 2202 posts | reg. Mar 8, 2008 30. zarkoniteArs Scholae Palatinae Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:53 am quote: Originally posted by Edzo: quote: Originally posted by mikepaul: Geeze, I'm getting paranoid. All I could think of is terrorists using this for communication since it's so... underground... Not that I want to give them any ideas, but if there was an internet relic that would seem tailor made for them, it would be Hotline. At least based on what I remember of it. In fact, the Wiki on it says that the company went under after the venture capital funds pulled out after 9/11. I'm quite certain they're all using IRC and Skype! 758 posts | reg. Nov 10, 2004 31. fferitt25Ars Praefectus Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:09 pm It's cool stuff though. Fun to play with as alternative web development pages go. Might set something up on my own site. 4145 posts | reg. Apr 24, 2007 32. derbbreSeniorius Lurkius Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:10 pm New Poster Just because HTTP (and HTML) can handle images, video, and Flash, doesn't mean you have to use them. If you are against such things, just point Apache at a directory of files and away you go. I don't understand the need for the throwback. 7 posts | reg. Jul 3, 2008 33. Anonymous FreakArs Scholae Palatinaeet Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:14 pm I started using the 'net before Mosaic was even created, and Gopher was my hypertext protocol of choice. It's odd to look back on all the 'surfing' I used to do on Gopher now, and how cool it was. 784 posts | reg. Aug 9, 2002 34. EdzoArs Praefectuset Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:44 pm quote: Originally posted by fferitt25: So unless these 'would-be' terrorists spend some time and energy grabbing the source code and updating the software to to fix the Errors and modernize the code - they're probably better off with an SSL or VNC connection. Much easier to deal with. And a hell of a lot more secure. Or perhaps an SSH-accessible BBS server, loaded with the latest jihadist door games. 4335 posts | reg. Jul 7, 2006 35. Wheels Of ConfusionArs Legatus Legioniset Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:48 pm quote: Originally posted by rduncan10: Twitter is content stripped of design. Twitter has content? quote: Originally posted by dicax: wow...4chan is even awesomer with gopher. So many useless .gifs... Thing is, 4chan's page design is so simple you're not losing a lot with the gopher version. 39060 posts | reg. Jan 18, 2009 36. VernArs Scholae Palatinaeet Subscriptor Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:54 pm I still do a significant portion of my browsing from elinks. In fact, this post if brought to you from elinks. 630 posts | reg. Mar 19, 2002 37. funkatronArs Scholae Palatinae Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:27 pm It was kind of odd that you quote Cameron Kaiser extensively in the piece, but refer to "someone at Floodgap." Cameron Kaiser is the sole person behind Floodgap, as the first line of text at Floodgap.com indicates: "My name is Cameron Kaiser..." Beyond that, I do wish the tone at the end were a bit less dismissive. 676 posts | reg. Jul 9, 2000 38. fxdsArs Tribunus Militum Wed Nov 04, 2009 2:50 pm Gopher was a very nice, organized step forward from the trackless wastes of ftp servers that came before it. But it was clear from the first time I fired up Mosaic that the web was the real destination, with gopher only a step, albeit an important one, along the way. 1906 posts | reg. Nov 9, 2000 39. PanicSwitchSmack-Fu Master, in training Wed Nov 04, 2009 3:17 pm I don't know. I think Gopher could still be somewhat useful nowadays. It'd make a good starting point for a "universal" content system. The internet is well and good, but it'd be awesome to have something like a "library computer protocol" that you would have this hierarchical organization of information that can be easily displayed in a plaintext (with simple image) format, which could then be styled by the user using a variation of CSS. That way the content is in a somewhat universally portable system. Again this may be a specialized case...but I can see something appealing about that. 1. Guest Wed Nov 04, 2009 4:28 pm New Poster quote: Originally posted by funkatron: Beyond that, I do wish the tone at the end were a bit less dismissive. IMHO, it's hard to not be dismissive of a content discovery protocol which points to virtually no content. For myself: I thought Gopher was okay but inferior to simple FTP access with a good client (ncftp being the definition of "good ftp client" in the early-90's) ... A lot easier to author content on an FTP site and no harder to find it. Of course HTTP and HTML were at once more complex and infinitely more accessible, and it's no wonder that they took the steam out of Gopher's sails early on. I did get a kick out of a pre-proposal in 1993 calling the two-year-old Gopher protocol "venerable" though. I first heard of Gopher in early 1992, and thought of it as old the next year as well. I mean, AOL, Compuserv and just about any BBS had better content interfaces if that's what you wanted in those days, and the "real" content was more directly accessible via FTP than navigating through a gopher hole. post | reg. 2. Guest Wed Nov 04, 2009 4:31 pm New Poster quote: Originally posted by PanicSwitch: I don't know. I think Gopher could still be somewhat useful nowadays. It'd make a good starting point for a "universal" content system. The internet is well and good, but it'd be awesome to have something like a "library computer protocol" that you would have this hierarchical organization of information that can be easily displayed in a plaintext (with simple image) format, which could then be styled by the user using a variation of CSS. That way the content is in a somewhat universally portable system. Again this may be a specialized case...but I can see something appealing about that. Why wouldn't you just build that exact same system on HTTP and HTML, taking advantage of the past decade and a half of client progress, instead of "reviving" a command shell from 1991? post | reg. 3. kragbaxArs Praefectus Wed Nov 04, 2009 5:16 pm For the record Goldy isn't a gopher, he's a chipmonk. The original artist didn't know what a gopher looked like so he drew woodland critters, one of which was a chipmonk. At least Goldy Gopher sounds somewhat better than Goldy the Chipmunk. Now if our athletes could avoid being arrested every other week. Gopher state is a nickname from the early days from a 1857 political cartoon. Nine politicians with gopher bodies were pulling a locomotive which is a reference to a $5 million bill for railroad development. The name just stuck after that. Source: Gopher Guide 17th Edition. 2009. Regents of the University of Minnesota. Page viii. 3042 posts | reg. Mar 13, 2000 4. fletc3herArs Tribunus Militum Wed Nov 04, 2009 5:51 pm I coded some gopher sites for a while in school, but even when working on them the limitations were palpable. Ironically, when I first started coding HTML I was looking for the markup tags that would allow me to create a menu page, expecting that some kind of site navigation would be built-in. Took me a little while to realize it was entirely free form. 1863 posts | reg. Aug 3, 2006 5. gimfredArs Scholae Palatinae Wed Nov 04, 2009 7:29 pm Has someone seriously got Windows 7 running in 20MB? I couldn't figure out why that was relevant but it is impressive. We haven't seen that since Win95 1469 posts | reg. Jun 24, 2009 6. PsychoStreakArs Tribunus Angusticlavius Thu Nov 05, 2009 2:27 am quote: Basically, it's the Web without commercial users, graphic design, Flash video, cookies, and popup windows My initial reaction to reading that was, "Wow, that sounds fantastic!" It think that's mainly due to the love/hate relationship with Flash. While I enjoy being able to watch shows, movies and the like online, and there are a handful of flash games I play once in a great while, I realized that beyond those things, the Web is faster and just better without Flash. Anyway, I had not realized that Gopher had only been out for around a year, possibly less when we covered it in college. I think it would have made a better impression if we hadn't had to access it through the CUNY VM system, which itself was coelacanth like even back then in how archaic it was. 7449 posts | reg. Dec 8, 1999 7. onkeljonasArs Tribunus Angusticlavius Thu Nov 05, 2009 7:15 am quote: Originally posted by PanicSwitch: I don't know. I think Gopher could still be somewhat useful nowadays. It'd make a good starting point for a "universal" content system. The internet is well and good, but it'd be awesome to have something like a "library computer protocol" that you would have this hierarchical organization of information that can be easily displayed in a plaintext (with simple image) format, which could then be styled by the user using a variation of CSS. That way the content is in a somewhat universally portable system. Again this may be a specialized case...but I can see something appealing about that. HTML works perfectly well for that. As has been mentioned, the markup doesn't force flash and fancy effects on your content, and it is very easy to organize information in a hierarchy. EDIT: Browsing a few gopher pages it seems like they are all plain text. How is that in any way competitive with the structured markup easily available with html? This comment was edited by onkeljonas on November 05, 2009 12:23 8162 posts | reg. Aug 31, 2003 8. Blue AdeptArs Praefectus Thu Nov 05, 2009 3:56 pm Eh, nostalgia for Gopher is weird. I used it before the web really took over the world, and there wasn't anything that the web didn't do better 6-12 months later. It does look like a dial up BBS though. I guess it has that going for it. 5189 posts | reg. Jan 23, 2001 9. NeoGopherSeniorius Lurkius Thu Nov 05, 2009 6:02 pm New Poster This is a surprisingly timely article for us. We’ve just launched the first early beta of NeoGopher (”new gopher”) . The idea behind NeoGopher is that it is a universal data browser, designed to allow browsing of data from any web based HTTP API. Imagine NeoGopher as Gopher re-invented for the 21st century. NeoGopher is what Gopher might have been if instead of fading away in 1993, it had improved, extended, developed, added features and become more closely integrated with the world wide web. NeoGopher is dramatically more powerful than Gopher ever was. You are welcome to download the beta at http://www.neogopher.com we’d love your feedback. Andrew Stuart - Founder NeoGopher 1 post | reg. Nov 6, 2009 10. wiz420Ars Scholae Palatinaeet Subscriptor Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:01 pm Although gopher was around when I started stealing net access from the local university as a young teen (sick and tired of AOL), I don't remember doing much more than trying it out once or twice. I was more into usenet, MUSEs and MUSHs, and using archie to try to find mac shareware.