A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies... the chance to
begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!
Just to piggy-back on cat's posts [0] [1] regarding gopher and new
adherents to this august and elegant protocol, yes newcomers should
absolutely take into account that gopher preceded HTML and has
continued to be here all along. I myself never dabbled in it until
very recently but have been enjoying the fresh air and the buried
treasure.
Saving gopher though, it just conjures up goofy images:
"We're losing her! Give me the paddles!"
"CLEAR!!"
<<<BZZZZZZZTT>>>
"Nothing!"
"CLEAR!!"
<<<BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTT>>>
beep-beep beep-beep beep-beep...
There is a non-zero possibility that gopher will be here after we
have all shuffled off this mortal coil[2]. The rumors of its death
are greatly exaggerated. It's a tough little protocol with a lot
going for it.
At one time folks knew to enter a new 'space' online quietly, lurk
for a bit to get a feel for things, and RTFM (yeah, right) or at
least pretend that they had RTFM and play along like they knew what
was going on until they knew what was going on.
(They knew this in part because the loud and unwary got LARTed
within an inch of their lives and partly because people in general
seemed to be more inclined to practice basic politeness. I suppose
human nature had not yet caught up to the freedom from consequences
inherent in most online communications.)
Anyway. I think the lack of discoverability is a feature, not a
bug. It enforces perseverence in order to participate and pushes
folks to actually ask one another where to find things as spring
once noted[3].
Many will, having not received their expected doses of dopamine,
move on or else make asses of themselves trying to get enough
attention to meet their needs. The latter will just be walling
themselves off from the actual community while still using the
protocol (is there a cask of Amontillado in there with you?) a
self-correcting problem perhaps, a rarity in this day and age.
Maybe a few will even kick the dopamine habit. The beauty of the
protocol is that someone can produce a new gopher hole and no one
ever has to visit it, not even once. No usenet death penalty
required. In circumlunar space, no one can hear you plonk. In fact
I have no idea whether anyone will read this[4]. And that's A-okay.
I'm not ready to claim my civil right just yet.
The gopher protocol makes me think of this quote from Chuck Close:
Photography...it's the easiest medium in which to be competent.
Anybody with a point-and-shoot camera can take a competent picture.
But it's the hardest medium in which to have, to express, some kind
of personal vision. Because there is no touch, there is no hand,
there is no physicality. The fact that you CAN have something
that's recognizable from 50 feet across the gallery as a Diane
Arbus or an Irving Penn...the fact that you can have recognizable
authorship means they really have done something.
If someone can read your phlog post and come away with something
meaningful from just a bit of bare text, if you can make a mark on
the world without inline images or cascading stylesheets then you
might just have something on the ball. Be well, sundogs.
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/ / /_____\___\ \
/ / / \
/ / /___________________\
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[0] gopher://baud.baby:70/0/phlog/fs20190530.txt
[1] gopher://baud.baby:70/0/phlog/fs20190531.txt
[2] gopher://gopher.black:70/1/phlog/20180705-space-gopher-2000
[3] gopher://republic.circumlunar.space:70/0/%7espring/phlog/2019-01-21__Solving_the_Search_Prob
lem.txt
[4] gopher://republic.circumlunar.space:70/0/%7espring/phlog/2019-04-28__Easy_Mode.txt
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