"The rise and fall of the Gopher protocol" / gopher rememberation station

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > "The rise and fall of the Gopher protocol" / gopher rememberation station

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Lutha Mahtin: Oct 10, 2010; Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

i found an article

Obsolesced: Twenty-five years ago, a small band of programmers from the University of Minnesota ruled the Internet. And then they didnt.

quote:

[...]
On March 18, in a conference room of the hotel, Berners-Lee presented one possible breakthrough: the World Wide Web. It was evening. Many of the 530 conference attendees had already gone to the bar or to dinner. To the curious who stayed behind, Berners-Lee explained that the Web could be used to connect all the information on the internet through hyperlinks. You could click on a word or a phrase in a document and immediately retrieve a related document, click again on a phrase in that document, and so on. It acted like a web laid over the internet, so you could spider from one source of information to another on nearly invisible threads.

Two other programs with the potential to expand access to the internet � WAIS and Prospero � were discussed in the same session. In the reports of people who saw the presentation, the Web did not come across as the best of them, or even as particularly promising.

The next day, in the light of the afternoon, McCahill and Anklesaria presented the Internet Gopher. It was simple enough to explain: With minimal computer knowledge, you could download an interface � the Gopher � and begin searching the internet, retrieving information linked to it from anywhere in the world. It was like the Web but more straightforward, and it was already working.

In fact, most attendees needed little introduction to Gopher � the software had been out for months. It was the developers they were curious about, the Minnesotans who had created the first popular means of accessing the internet. �People we�d never met were telling us how they were using our stuff and adding things to it,� McCahill says. �We had no idea how big Gopher was going to be until we experienced this firsthand and realized that growth could be exponential for a while.�

In the years that followed, the future seemed obvious. The number of Gopher users expanded at orders of magnitude more than the World Wide Web. Gopher developers held gatherings around the country, called GopherCons, and issued a Gopher T-shirt � worn by MTV veejay Adam Curry when he announced the network�s Gopher site. The White House revealed its Gopher site on Good Morning America. In the race to rule the internet, one observer noted, �Gopher seems to have won out.�

but we all know how it turned out

bonus: one of the gopher guys is posting in the comments "it's me, i'm the guy in the op"

# ? Aug 12, 2016 17:49

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# ? May 9, 2024 18:16

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

I used gopher once when i was 5, op

# ? Aug 12, 2016 21:50

Kthulhu5000: Jul 25, 2006; by R. Guyovich

even as a teen in the mid-1990s gopher, archie, and all of that seemed like a lot of polite-cough page filler in books about the Internet. Like, "here's the refined and dignified way to get information, now let's get down to the business of viewing Ate My Balls webrings in Netscape 2.0".

# ? Aug 13, 2016 00:43

akadajet: Sep 14, 2003

I remember looking at gopher sites as a kid. Going "wtf is this". Then looking up sick/awesome Mortal Kombat fan art done in MS Paint in the AOL gaming keyword thing.

Also downloading games written in QBASIC found via AOL's file search thing and then loving with them.

What I'm saying is that AOL was better than gopher.

# ? Aug 13, 2016 00:57

yellow borders: Jan 7, 2010

akadajet posted:

I remember looking at gopher sites as a kid. Going "wtf is this". Then looking up sick/awesome Mortal Kombat fan art done in MS Paint in the AOL gaming keyword thing.

ANTAGONIST GAMING NETWORK (keyword: ANT)

# ? Aug 13, 2016 01:04

Lutha Mahtin: Oct 10, 2010; Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

i looked down my nose at aol when my family first got the internet. this was during the time when companies were putting things on their aol site that they didn't put on their actual web site. so i'd read (in paper magazines, whoa!) about "oh check out this cool interactive thing we put on our aol keyword" and i'd just think heh, must be fun to coddle your little baby aol users in their playpen :rolleyes:

i was about 11 years old

# ? Aug 13, 2016 03:38

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

internet explorer supported gopher until they found some sort of exploit for it so instead of fixing it they just took it out.

# ? Aug 13, 2016 15:40

Sweevo: Nov 8, 2007; i sometimes throw cables away

i mean straight into the bin without spending 10+ years in the box of might-come-in-handy-someday first

im a fucking monster

in college i wrote an essay about how the web was a passing fad, and that the internet was being ruined by people putting non-computer stuff on it.

early 1900s futurists were less wrong about technology than me

# ? Aug 13, 2016 15:41

Lutha Mahtin: Oct 10, 2010; Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

Sweevo posted:

in college i wrote an essay about how the web was a passing fad, and that the internet was being ruined by people putting non-computer stuff on it.

so your posting is intentional? :haw:

# ? Aug 13, 2016 16:22

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

you know what was great about gopher?

no javascript
no blink tag
no banners

# ? Aug 13, 2016 17:58

Lutha Mahtin: Oct 10, 2010; Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

an elegant protocol for a more civilized time

# ? Aug 13, 2016 18:11

DONT THREAD ON ME: Oct 1, 2002; by Nyc_Tattoo; Floss Finder

Sweevo posted:

in college i wrote an essay about how the web was a passing fad, and that the internet was being ruined by people putting non-computer stuff on it.

early 1900s futurists were less wrong about technology than me

haha, what year was this

# ? Aug 13, 2016 22:39

Progressive JPEG: Feb 19, 2003

are there any libraries for scraping SA (ie that i wouldnt need to necessarily update myself whenever a layout change happens)

i could see a gopher proxy being a thing

# ? Aug 13, 2016 23:13

Sweevo: Nov 8, 2007; i sometimes throw cables away

i mean straight into the bin without spending 10+ years in the box of might-come-in-handy-someday first

im a fucking monster

MALE SHOEGAZE posted:

haha, what year was this

must have been 1996 or maybe early 97.

the dot com boom was just getting going. i think i was mainly annoyed about all the internet references that were suddenly being shoehorned into things like adverts for microwave meals

Sweevo fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Aug 14, 2016

# ? Aug 13, 2016 23:22

Valeyard: Mar 30, 2012; Grimey Drawer

Progressive JPEG posted:

are there any libraries for scraping SA (ie that i wouldnt need to necessarily update myself whenever a layout change happens)

i could see a gopher proxy being a thing

im sure camh made something, and i also ahve something but its kind of wip and dead

# ? Aug 13, 2016 23:34

RISCy Business: Jun 17, 2015; bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork; Fun Shoe

it's so hard for me to imagine being around during the time the internet was becoming a big thing and being like "nah this'll never pan out"

# ? Aug 13, 2016 23:40

Progressive JPEG: Feb 19, 2003

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388195

:rip:

code:

         ,_---~~~~~----._         
  _,,_,*^____      _____``*g*\"*, 
 / __/ /'     ^.  /      \ ^@q   f 
[  @f | @))    |  | @))   l  0 _/  
 \`/   \~____ / __ \_____/    \   
  |           _l__l_           I   
  }          [______]           I  
  ]            | | |            |  
  ]             ~ ~             |  
  |                            |   
   |                           |

# ? Aug 13, 2016 23:46

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003; Can't post for 11 hours!

MALE SHOEGAZE posted:

haha, what year was this

2008

# ? Aug 14, 2016 00:16

Salt Fish: Sep 11, 2003; Cybernetic Crumb

Humanity is a passing fad in the universe. RIP

# ? Aug 14, 2016 01:12

Kthulhu5000: Jul 25, 2006; by R. Guyovich

computer molester posted:

it's so hard for me to imagine being around during the time the internet was becoming a big thing and being like "nah this'll never pan out"

poo poo was so hype back in the day that I guess one could develop a weary attitude and project its failure in the hope that everyone would shut up about it all and move on to something else. if one were some kind of clown, living a clown's life, granted.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 01:18

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

computer molester posted:

it's so hard for me to imagine being around during the time the internet was becoming a big thing and being like "nah this'll never pan out"

at the time a computer fast enough to run a web browser cost $2,000. and then you needed $20/month for a dial-up account on top of that. and if you weren't a complete loving loser, you needed a second phone line so you didn't block your primary using the internet. that's another $30-50/mo, depending on how bad your local baby bell fucks you over.

in 1996, the median household income was $35k. median wage was $18k.

can you imagine spending 6% of your annual income on a pc, then having to lay out $50-70 a month on top of that?

or, to put it in today's money: imagine shelling out $5k for a PC, and then paying $100-150 a month for internet service. to download porn at three kilobytes a second. would you have bet on a business depending on that poo poo?

# ? Aug 14, 2016 01:48

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

also, back then, the great luxury of a college resnet wasn't ethernet directly to your room... it was having a second phone line / slip account for free.

free dial-up was like, a huge loving perk.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 01:49

RISCy Business: Jun 17, 2015; bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork; Fun Shoe

when you put it in that context it makes a lot more sense, but it's still kind of difficult for me to imagine

# ? Aug 14, 2016 06:32

Sweevo: Nov 8, 2007; i sometimes throw cables away

i mean straight into the bin without spending 10+ years in the box of might-come-in-handy-someday first

im a fucking monster

this is what a typical website looked like:

the mid-90s web was terrible. geocites sites looked elaborate and well-designed compared to most 1996 web pages. multinational corporations would proudly boast about their single page with a 100px logo and a paragraph of text on the default IE2 grey background. CSS didn't exist, HTML frames were the hot new thing, and if you wanted to ensure compatibility then you couldn't assume the user's browser even supported tables.

Kthulhu5000 posted:

poo poo was so hype back in the day that I guess one could develop a weary attitude and project its failure in the hope that everyone would shut up about it all and move on to something else. if one were some kind of clown, living a clown's life, granted.

that's about it yeah. if you weren't there to see it then it's hard to explain the level of hype the internet got in the mid-late 90s. at one point just changing your company's name from Poop Ltd to ePoop Ltd or Poop.com would make the stock price double. you'd turn on the TV and some kid in an advert was talking about the internet, and by "talking about the internet" i mean he randomly added words like "cyber" and "virtual" into sentences while a bad computer graphic of a woman claimed she was the internet and was here to tell him about pop-tarts or whatever.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 14:30

Lutha Mahtin: Oct 10, 2010; Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

the 90s internet explosion was nuts

the mainstream media had stories about the registration and sale of domain names. i remember hearing things like "someone registered internet dot com, wow they are going to make so much money with that one!!!". and one of the slightly-scandalous stories du jour on newsmagazine shows and in newspaper columns was the rise of porn on computers, and how the owners of the "best" domains were going to make the most money. sex.com was mentioned frequently

browsers were so buggy, and compatibility was so bad, that we had multiple browser versions on our 68k mac at all times. explorer 2 & 3, netscape 2 & 3, netscape 3 GOLD version (which was the best one :cool:

). like i remember for a while ie3 was my daily driver because it seemed to be working the best with most sites, but then i'd come across a site (or even a single page on an otherwise-fine site) that caused problems. maybe the page wouldn't load or render, maybe it would render in a hilariously wrong way, or maybe it would just hang the browser. that's when you'd try a different browser, or even do a bunch of cargo-cult exercises (reboot, cookies, cache, settings)

browser plugins were another unique aspect of the early web. i remember many times clicking on a link to a web game and then feeling happy and excited when i saw a java applet start to load, because this meant that the game might actually work. things like java and flash were so beyond the abilities of native browser technology for many years

# ? Aug 14, 2016 17:11

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

at the time a computer fast enough to run a web browser cost $2,000. and then you needed $20/month for a dial-up account on top of that. and if you weren't a complete loving loser, you needed a second phone line so you didn't block your primary using the internet. that's another $30-50/mo, depending on how bad your local baby bell fucks you over.

in 1996, the median household income was $35k. median wage was $18k.

can you imagine spending 6% of your annual income on a pc, then having to lay out $50-70 a month on top of that?

or, to put it in today's money: imagine shelling out $5k for a PC, and then paying $100-150 a month for internet service. to download porn at three kilobytes a second. would you have bet on a business depending on that poo poo?

i was about to say this can't be right since i distinctly remember using ie on our performa 450 but whoa those were $1800 when they came out.

there was a dial-up company that was free for educators so my dad got us an account with that, though we eventually switched to earthlink since it was much faster

# ? Aug 14, 2016 17:56

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003; Can't post for 11 hours!

Endless Mike posted:

i was about to say this can't be right since i distinctly remember using ie on our performa 450 but whoa those were $1800 when they came out.

there was a dial-up company that was free for educators so my dad got us an account with that, though we eventually switched to earthlink since it was much faster

The first computer I used on the internet was a Packard Bell Pentium 120mhz, which I think was $1500 or so in 1994? We got dial up internet in 1996.

# ? Aug 14, 2016 18:07

oh no blimp issue: Feb 23, 2011

my dad winproxy on a laptop when we had dial-up so we could all connect at once over one connection
it was very slow

# ? Aug 14, 2016 18:23

Asymmetric POSTer: Aug 17, 2005

Awia posted:

my dad winproxy on a laptop when we had dial-up so we could all connect at once over one connection
it was very slow

a cool dad

# ? Aug 14, 2016 18:56

Sweevo: Nov 8, 2007; i sometimes throw cables away

i mean straight into the bin without spending 10+ years in the box of might-come-in-handy-someday first

im a fucking monster

Lutha Mahtin posted:

one of the slightly-scandalous stories du jour on newsmagazine shows and in newspaper columns was the rise of porn on computers

click here to see gillian anderson's head crudely pasted onto 50 different bodies
click here to see badly-dithered 256 colour images of women in huge early 90s lingerie draped over motorcycles
click here for a page that never loads because it's 80 giant uncompressed .bmps and i never tested the site anywhere except from my own hard drive
click here then here then here and up-vote my website and eventually you'll get to see nine pictures of pamela anderson covered in jpeg artifacts (four of them are the same picture in different sizes)

# ? Aug 14, 2016 19:00

oh no blimp issue: Feb 23, 2011

Sweevo posted:

click here to see gillian anderson's head crudely pasted onto 50 different bodies
click here to see badly-dithered 256 colour images of women in huge early 90s lingerie draped over motorcycles
click here for a page that never loads because it's 80 giant uncompressed .bmps and i never tested the site anywhere except from my own hard drive
click here then here then here and up-vote my website and eventually you'll get to see nine pictures of pamela anderson covered in jpeg artifacts (four of them are the same picture in different sizes)

none of these are actually links

# ? Aug 14, 2016 19:04

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

# ? Aug 14, 2016 19:32

Gazpacho: Jun 18, 2004; by Fluffdaddy; Slippery Tilde

gopher never approached the sophistication of BBSes so why even talk about it

# ? Aug 14, 2016 22:25

Sniep: Mar 28, 2004; All I needed was that fatty blunt...

King of Breakfast

Gazpacho posted:

gopher never approached the sophistication of BBSes so why even talk about it

apples to wheelbarrows dontchathink?

sure they exist on the same farm and occasionally make contact but they arent even both fruits

# ? Aug 14, 2016 22:55

Gazpacho: Jun 18, 2004; by Fluffdaddy; Slippery Tilde

gopher was a horribly individualizing system, you couldn't have any kind of conversation with other human beings on it except by using it as a MUD launcher

# ? Aug 14, 2016 23:03

Gazpacho: Jun 18, 2004; by Fluffdaddy; Slippery Tilde

SO MEDIA

# ? Aug 14, 2016 23:09

Gazpacho: Jun 18, 2004; by Fluffdaddy; Slippery Tilde

quote:

a computer system called NeXT, which had recently been invented by Steve Jobs

# ? Aug 14, 2016 23:30

Progressive JPEG: Feb 19, 2003

Gazpacho posted:

SO MEDIA

makes me think of https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+v-chat

# ? Aug 15, 2016 00:08

Lutha Mahtin: Oct 10, 2010; Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

makes me think of jurassic park

# ? Aug 15, 2016 00:10

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# ? May 9, 2024 18:16

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003; Can't post for 11 hours!

Lutha Mahtin posted:

makes me think of jurassic park

Jurassic Park predates that by about six years.

# ? Aug 15, 2016 01:54

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > "The rise and fall of the Gopher protocol" / gopher rememberation station

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