@cmccullough a

I think quite a few people are with you on this, maybe what we need to do is work together and all link to each other.

If we perhaps also set up a gopher, we could link those together too, that way if anyone tries to say 'no one uses it' the number of interlinked gopher servers tell a different story.

@zleap @cmccullough I have no inkling of a conceptual hypothesis for what a "gopher" is in this context, but I do have a blog. 😁

@courtcan
Before the web was around there was a protocol for searching other computers called gopher.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) in 1993 gopher was probably bigger than the web, in 1997 it was a tiny fraction of the size of the web. Netscape Navigator was a web browser but it also had gopher and ftp capabilities.
@zleap @cmccullough

@dlakelan @courtcan @cmccullough

The problem now is that it seems that not all browsers support gopher protocol, I think firefox may do. I would guess any browser based off firefox code.

I guess big tech can't monitize it or steal data for AI training.

@zleap @dlakelan @courtcan @cmccullough Firefox does not support Gopher, and there's no reason why Gopher couldn't be crawled for AI training, it's just not because it's not popular enough. If it was more popular it surely would be.

@cmccullough Modern time decay/karma "forums" are a pox on in depth discussions.

@cmccullough
+100

Someone should document the good old days of the internet. I would love to show the today’s young folks how fun and open it was.

@saneef @cmccullough
There is a 'small web' movement out there.
I'm not at home so haven't got my bookmarks with me - but https://smolweb.org/ might give you some pointers even if it's not the easiest site to navigate

@cmccullough

:) my gopher is

gopher://gopher.vern.cc/1/~zleap