Gemini - An alternative to the web

The web is broken.

In the next part I go on to rant-explain my point. If that's too tiresome ... skip down to the next headline. You won't miss much :unsure:

A handful of companies own the most frequented online properties. The data is vacuumed into their silos for profit and gain of managers and shareholders. Privacy invasion is rampant and even public data is hidden behind large fences requiring at least an account to consume it if not a paid subscription.

The technology has become so overwhelming that barely anyone is able to create a functional web client anymore. Gecko ( Firefox) and Webkit (Chrome and almost anything else) are mostly it. And even the browsers themselves may be quite toxic to the digital health of their users.

Useless scripts, mindless use of effects (many of which are badly implemented), metric tons of trackers, mountains of ads, etc. slow everything down to a crawl despite modern internet connections delivering speeds up into the gigabit range. And once all that "goodness" has found its way into the browser the computer's fans start to blow as some runaway script or animation overload sends the CPU into overdrive.

And we're not even done yet. New stuff is added onto the web all the time making it more and more complex, harder to deal with, slower, more insecure and invasive to everyday life.

It's safe to say that I came to hate the web. Well ... at least the part on the surface.

There's still an almost invisible universe of sites and projects out there. They are hard to find as search engines don't favor them. And while some of them are great for content, they might just be yet another victim of Wordpress or some other heavyweight, marketing authoring system that overloads the site with so much junk it takes literal eons to load or refuses to work outright if you use some form of blocking.

The web as it existed in the late 1990s and early 2000s was a different place. Nowhere near as polished, but it worked. It seemed much easier to participate in meaningful conversations with people you cared about. Sure there was the occasional oddball but nothing like the level of toxic trolling and sheer nonsense we see on "social" media today. Sure people had arguments online, but they may have actually mattered instead of showing how infantile many adults (often men) really are.

Some of my gripes with the web aren't fixable. The early web was populated by nerds. My kind of folk. We loved to try new things. Video chat? Pleeeease that's old news folks. Portable ARM computer? Yeah, I run OpenBSD on my Zaurus of 8 years already.

The web was smaller, more trusting and didn't have many of those monolithic structures sucking everything in like black holes. I loved running various communities online back then. Never was it to be about profit but about having a great experience online for anyone involved.

Of course once a broader population entered the web there was a growing market for centralized places like the Zuckverse, etc. People flocked there because I think they didn't really know where to go otherwise. Nobody can build and maintain their own website. Nor would they want to. Just chat, share and feel some of that sweet sweet social dopamine rush when people like your latest pic. Welcome to Web 2 ... the slaughterhouse is this way.

The technical aspect is more solvable. Yet as a now retired web dev I know how involving it is. Making a website is no longer a simple task of firing up some authoring application on your PC, put a few tables in and click upload. ... Well it could be but let's be honest most people would prefer something more advanced. So we have all those databases, scripting languages, CMS, DAMs, HTTP server, etc. etc. to make essentially HTML code for people to consume. HTML is quite simple, but I would not want to teach it to my grandma. So even on that very fundamental level the Web as we know it is broken ... since it's very early beginnings.

Rant over -> Alternatives to the web exist!

Gopher and Gemini - Small alternative protocols

The web (http) is not the only game in town. Before the web some of you might have used BBS systems. Then there was / is Gopher. Gopher is a text only protocol working in many ways like the early versions of the HTTP web. Put files on a server and people with clients can download and display them. However, Gopher doesn't have the same styling options as HTTP. It also lacks important improvements like encryption, etc. Interestingly enough the protocol had fewer servers 10 years ago then it has now. So there is a bit of a comeback.

Gopher is also interesting when looking at the next contender. Gemini. I've now spent quite some time on Gemini and must say ... it's awesome!

Gemini - The better Gopher?

Like Gopher Gemini is a text centric system. Servers deliver essentially raw text to a client of your choosing. It supports encryption and Gemtext - the formatting language of Gemini - is dead simple. It's essentially a subset of Markdown and takes 60 seconds to learn.

Gemini doesn't have the feature set of the web. It's not designed to and actively avoids becoming another web. The web is a place to place an Amazon order, book a flight or hotel and if you so choose use the Dukkhanet (my umbrella term for Social media, etc.).

Gemini is another protocol. It's not designed to be a shopping center. It supports images, but you have to request them in your clients. Servers are usually on the dumb side. It's your client choosing the formatting. Gemtext has almost no styling options besides making text readable. Doing fancy marketing is not really in the cards there.

As a result it's of no interest to big tech Dukkhanet operators. Gemini has instead turned into a highly community driven environment full of great stories, nerdy hangouts and overall a much more trusting environment. Think Geocities but text only. People there have no financial incentive to share their thoughts. They do it for their own enjoyment and hopefully to help others. And none of that data is hidden behind accounts, paywalls or other such day to day annoyances of the today's web. Trackers, Cookies, etc. it's all unheard of. Clients are dead simple to implement and numerous. Servers are easy as well but there's a few free hosting providers you might want to try if you choose to publish on Gemini.

Another refreshing sight is the use of pseudonyms. With the Zuckverse came that normalization of using one's real name on the web. While I'm Ok with that it certainly limits freedom of speech.

Get started with Gemini

To get into Gemini I'd recommend the lagrange browser: https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange/releases

It's multiplatform, and it's very easy to use. Plus when you fire it up it comes with various recommendations for where to go.

You might want to start using kennedy (gemini://kennedy.gemi.dev/) or another search engine to explore. Another way to get around is this little index similar to the 1990s Yahoo index: gemini://cdg.thegonz.net/

Another little gem of links can be found on solderpunks website: gemini://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/only-tech-on-gemini.gmi

This talk is a great explainer of Gemini and got me into it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2Q35uFCq8Q

Final thoughts

Gemini cannot and will never compete with the rich web. It doesn't have to. It's an alternative place. Think of it as another district of that shiny cyber city we wander every day. People there are a bit more like cyber-amish. It's a crowd that looks for real content that's not (yet?) touched by corporate interests and the increasing levels of global paranoia. It's full of dead ends and many things that aren't too interesting. But in the end, that's what the web used to be in the beginning. Gemini has only been out for 5 years in a web dominated world.

Give it a go, try it. Maybe there's a good read in it for you. Maybe you can contribute to it with your own pod. It's dead simple and fun.