# 2018-07-08 19:51:31.073827 UTC (+0000)

Why We Need Gopher

The web has shown to not work towards spreading information, but towards
restricting what is there. As a result  of its design flaws we only have
three web  engines left to  write a  client for it,  there is a  cult of
cruft around  designing extension for  HTTP and  of course there  is the
topic of what content is served.

Try using the web using tor. Everywhere a strange clown will appear:

	gopher://bitreich.org/0/ascii/clownflare.vt

Is this the freedom we want? Can we trust the logfiles of clownflare?

Using gopher, the protocol is defined  and does not know of any arbitary
optimisations for  speeding up  serving complex documents  which execute
scripting  language snippets  in strange  and now  nearly cpu-opcode-low
ways. It  is possible  to write a  client in a  simple shell  script, in
every language in under five minutes. Writing a server is even easier.

Then let us discuss openly why we need gopher:

* To present all information in the world in an unobstrusive way.
* To be able to communicate with Mars[0]
* To safely communicate over tor with defined metadata. Nothing is hidden.
* To show that there is an alternative to the web, which can do the same.
	* Showing this allows different viewpoints on the web and the
	  Internet. New ideas can spark from this.

***********************[ SHAMEFUL AD ]************************
*                                                            *
*     See more about this at my talk at bitreichcon 2018!    *
*                                                            *
**************************************************************

Have fun!

20h

[0] gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20180705-space-gopher-2000