“[…] gopher [was] an Edenic protocol of innocence (in comparison to HTML, the protocol of commerce and experience)”
Ars Technica checks in on Gopher, the largely-forgotten pre-www protocol for getting information from servers in a simple, hypertext format. It’s out there still, just like the old BBSes, telnet MUDs / MOOs / MUSHes, Usenet, etc., and still useful in some contexts. Very few contexts, maybe – I can’t imagine there’s much in the way of Gopher pr0n or warez trading to give continued backwater life to the old medium, but hey, 4chan’s /b/ is available through Gopher…
What would things would be like if Gopherspace’s concision won out over HTTP’s ability to cram graphics and ads onto every resource? Sounds like our current mobile web app landscape.