Why Gopher?

Deep beneath the realm of the world wide web lives the hidden world of the
gopher, a forgotten curiosity seemingly inhabited only by computer geeks who
refuse to have the common sense to use the web as it exists today.  To the
casual observer, gopher usually elicits a scowl followed by a condescending
"Text only?", "Monaco?" or, most commonly, "Why!?"  Despite Cameron's excellent
retort to the gopher-scoffers, I thought I might comment briefly on the last
common scathing retort of "Why."

And to that "why?", I reply: "Why not?" In forgotten days of yore, we traveled
by buggy, by stream trains, horse, foot and many other obsolete and even absurd
forms of travel. Yet, to this day, we still use these slow forms of travel.
Many find such inefficient forms of travel to be enjoyable, calling such
activities "quaint" or "nostalgic" with no reference to their efficiency at
getting them from point A to B.

For example, the fall time ritual of the "Hay Ride" is a most ridiculous
and absurd form of travel imaginable yet, come autumn, people routinely
give up their comfortable car seats, conditioned air, and spring/shock
suspension to endure a bumpy, uncomfortable, hay fever filled ride that
usually costs more than if you had simply drove your car around the
block.  Indeed, I have seen them - they flock in droves to country
tractor trailer, gleefully exhorting their somewhat doubtful children
with gleeful pleas, exclaiming "Isn't this FUN?" (Not to be overly demeaning of
hay ride participants, in most fun is a fair bit of absurdity)  Can a person
not, with all this in mind, consider an alternate form of traversing the
Internet?

But, more so - with that in mind, imagine, if you will, finding a forgotten
walking trail in the woods, hidden from the view of the world of mass transit,
accessible only by those who don sneakers and take the proverbial road less
traveled.  Would you not be tempted to explore?  Imagine, all the more, if the
trail turned out to be a shortcut?  Who, other than the dullest of the
dullards, would not find that of at least some interest?

You may say it's a stretch, but I argue it's not far off base from gopher.
Indeed, here is that forgotten trail in the woods, that abandoned railway, that
Internet superhighway of days of yore hidden from view beneath the surface of
the World Wide Web.  Not only does it still work but, for some purposes, it
works quite well!  Be your destination simple news (thanks floodgap), a or a
quick weather report, gopher fetches your information with a speed that is very
hard to beat!

Dwell not on missing pictures, but think instead on what else is missing:  Ads?
Tracking cookies?  Animated gifs or, worse, flash video ads?  All gone in the
realm of the gopher!  Java vulnerabilities?  Browser vulnerabilities?  Java
script nonsense?  Not in the gopher tunnels.  Computer old?  Got windows 95 or
even dos?  Gopher doesn't care.  With a half way decent firewall in front, a
hacker is hard pressed to find any holes in gopher.  Slow connection?  Got a
56k modem?  That's plenty more bandwidth than gopher needs. Ad sponsors make
you carefully consider what you write on your blog?  Write as you want on
gopher.

Come one, come all - see the gopher holes of the Internet!  Pull that 486 out
of the closet and put it to good use!  Enjoy the pure text goodness that the
Internet founders intended.  Pure text is the best, and even Courier can be
cool!  And, who knows, you may actually find something worth reading.  That
much I can't guarantee, but this I can almost certainly guarantee: You won't be
disappointed with its speed.

-Helpdeskdan

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gopher://sdf.org/0/users/helpdeskdan/why.txt