I think the broader internet has, for a while now, come to the unsurprising conclusion that the internet, as we know it, is siloed and broken. I hesitate to think that this is particularly controversial, but it remains clear in my eyes that the continued centralization and “ecosystemization” of tech has systematically and unapologetically butchered the original “meaning” behind it. What started out, at its most basic, as a way to display rich, knowledgable hypertext has been bent repeatedly in order to adapt to a load of various technologies, culminating in the current technological landscape. An ongoing joke in web design has been the absolutely massive level of boilerplate needed in order to produce a modern website, including the pre-requisite mass of node modules required for a functioning web-scale, fully reactive, 100% free-range JavaScript SPA.

Nevertheless, this isn’t necessarily indicative of a landscape that must, under any circumstances, adapt to the whims of people like me, who would much prefer a more decentralized technological ecosystem. The internet, for all of its many, many flaws, remains, at its core, good for the purpose it has evolved to meet: serving a vast array of exciting, interesting content with lots of polish. I wouldn’t for a second suggest that this needs to change - it serves an important purpose in our daily lives. Moreover, I think it would be regressive to suggest that, because I personally see a proliferation of “bloated” website design as an issue, it must change or be “fixed.”

I won’t however, deny that my interest has been whetted by the re-adoption of older technologies, such as Gopher (as the title names). Though lacking a great deal of “modern” polish, the underlying ethical and technological framework of these older technological solutions remains indisputably attractive: a revival of the hacker “ethos” of creating simple solutions to problems.

Gopher and like technologies aren’t silver bullets to the problems we face with the internet: a fundamental re-evaluation of the way we interact with our massive data silos seems underway, barring any individual’s particular contribution to said “awakening.” But, at their core, it’s quite possible we could learn some things from the so-called “predecessors” of the web.

Simplicity

Trying to view a massive, modern website in a browser like Lynx, lacking JavaScript, is an exercise in futility, save from some particularly well-behaving outliers. Meanwhile, Gopher websites, in their simplicity, look presentable no matter how you slice them: there’s no styling to worry about calculating, no code to execute, just a plain ol’ directory with a bunch of files and subdirectories.

Resilience

Modern websites use a lot of moving parts to keep everything going: even static websites, like this blog, use a metric tonne of dependencies and assets in order to keep everything pretty and easy to maintain. The more moving parts you’ve got, the more likely something is to break. With Gopher, most everything¹ is a flat file structure, just like traditional website design.

It’s unfair to suggest that this is a one-way street though - what can we learn in the hindsight of our years maturing the standards underlying the web?

Cruft/Antiquity

I’m not talking stylistic here - as a programmer, my aesthetic sense is permanently and irrevocably warped. Instead, I’m talking about the finer points of building a Gopher client in 2019. Gopher, in its official specification, supports entries for CCSO Nameservers and IBM 3270 telnet support. Neither of these technologies are in particularly pervasive usage nowadays, and it remains increasingly unlikely that they will make a comeback².

Styling

Yes, yes - I made something resembling a case for a lack of styling up in my section on Simplicity, and as aforementioned, I can’t really put in a word for aesthetic to save my life, but for god’s sake, not everyone has had their common sense and taste ripped out of their skulls like I have - in 2019, people will expect something to look halfway to decent, and want to be able to express themselves in the content they’re serving. I’m not even talking extreme, just…maybe colours? I don’t know, I’m not very good at this.

TL;DR

The web is sorta broken, but that’s okay? Let’s just find ourselves a different playground and try to make it cooler while keeping what makes it awesome.