Tunneling in Gopherspace
Do you like retro computing and the old internet? Well if you are here and anything like me, you probably do. This is an introduction to Gopherspace.
Why I am writing this: There is a wealth of information about what Gopher is and why it’s great… in gopherspace. On the contrary the surface web can be a little bit hit or miss when it comes to finding information about it. A search for gopher will more likely than not return pictures of furry rodents; add the word ‘protocol’ to the query and there certainly exist a few great introductions, but this one is intended for Neocities users (and the like) who may not have heard of this awesome piece of computing history yet.
Gopher is an internet communication protocol which was released in 1991. You are probably familiar with HTTP, another protocol which is used for websites. The “World Wide Web,” although having become synonymous with the term “internet,” is not the only communication method in it’s likeness to exist. Gopher was the precursor to the web, having been invented just a few years before it. A gopher page (often called a gopherhole) is like a website, but with no images, sound, video, or javascript. “Gopherholes” are essentially completely text based, and are traversed in a menu like format. Image and video files can be uploaded to gopherholes too, but they can’t be viewed directly without downloading them first. This structure is ideal for terminal based browsing. Info Source: Wikipedia (Gopher Protocol)
Obviously, the more featureful World Wide Web quickly overtook Gopher after it’s release in 1993, nonethless, Gopherspace still remains active today by a sizable community of enthusiasts. Now you might be asking yourself, why in the hell would I ever use this if I can just use the web? Well, as you may already know all too well, the web’s strengths are also it’s downfall. In the modern age, the majority of websites are chalk full of unecessary javascript, ads, tracking, clutter, and oftentimes, not by the web’s own fault, home to unhealthy content. In the wake of generative AI and with billions of users online, browsing the web can feel like sifting through a whole lot of nothing. Gopher on the other hand, being completely text based and somewhat obscure, has a much greater focus on interesting text content that can’t be compensated for by other mediums. It’s not going to replace the World Wide Web for clear reasons, but it can be nice to get away from the noise for a change; and chances are you will learn a thing or two in your time there.
Accessing gopherspace is pretty easy. It used to be even easier because web browsers like Firefox supported gopher natively, meaning you could just navigate to a URL and view a page. However, in the case of Firefox this feature was removed in 2011. The easiest way to browse gopher is to use the Floodgap Public Gopher Proxy. This will serve gopher pages through http so they can be viewed just like websites. However, in my opinion this takes some of the fun out of it. The best way to access gopherspace is to use a terminal based browser like Lynx (released in 1992 but still maintained today) to get the true experience. There also exist other terminal based browsers, like Bombadillo, which are capable of browsing other newer text based internet protocols as well, such as Gemini and Finger. In fact, if you are viewing this page with Lynx or the like right now, you can just follow one of the URLs below to start.
Here are a few major gopher networks to start you off:
gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/
gopher://bitreich.org/
gopher://sdf.org/ SDF Public Access UNIX System
gopher://gopher.quux.org/
In the Beginning was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson Recommended read
gopher://thuleanotherworld.com My personal gopherhole
If you are interested, you can easily get your own gopherhole by creating an account on the SDF pubnix, or one of various other pubnix servers. (What’s a pubnix? https://www.theobori.cafe/posts/pubnix/). My personal gopherhole runs on the gophernicus server daemon.
Thank you for reading and hopefully you think Gopher is as cool as I do.