The Gemini protocol is relatively new, yet austere. It was meant to be a document serving system, between Gopher and HTTP (HTML). Its essentially Gopher, but uses a markdown like language called Gemtext and uses TLS. Being a whole new protocol, it needs it own client and server. There is a “Gemini” community, which isn’t for me, and many of the users are there to use the technology, rather than to communicate, or provide interesting information.

Some have said that using Gemini feels like the early Web, but I strongly disagree. It is very different. I first used the World Wide Web in early 1996 and it was an exciting place, which only got better in the following decade (but not after that). If there was anything you were interested in, you could find it; Astronomy, Doom addons , Music, Buffy the Vampire Slayer , the Apollo moon landings, philosophy, programming, Scrabble, Ceolocanths, Medieval_armour , Coral Reefs , Italy’s National UFO Centre , some random woman’s web-page about her pug dog, it was all there. You could follow from site to site find learn new things, explore particular topics or just stumble across something new. What the web was NOT, was just people talking about the Web, and blogs, which seems to describe most of what is on Gemini. You could follow a topic of interest on the Web, less so now, but you can’t in Gemini, mostly because the topics aren’t there, but also because it doesn’t have the hyperlink capability the Web does.

Gemini didn’t host much but blogs, and if there is other information, its hard to find. Gemini search engines for topics seem to bring up blog posts about those topics, or posts mentioning those topics, but not actual information. This is a quite different experience to the Web, where people and organisations made information available through that medium. Its unlikely you’re going to find train timetables on Gemini, or a list of capital cities, or a history of the Stahlhelm. The Web drew in enthusiasts who made pages about their passion, their interest or area of expertise. Gemini just doesn’t draw such people in, and I don’t think ever will because it offers nothing to them they don’t already have. A person who’s interest is in Eucalypts of the Otway Ranges is not likely the type of person who is also interested in niche technology, the “Smol web” and protocols and markup language. People learned HTML back in the 90s because they HAD to, and when tools enabled them to make web pages without having to write HTML, they became popular for reasons that ought to be obvious. Now they may use Facebook. The problem of how to make your information available on the Internet was solved decades ago.

Ultimately the problem isn’t technical but social. There is indeed an issue with the Web today. It is bloated and crufty as are modern Web browsers. Gemini is a response to this, but seems to have forgotten that the Web can still be simple. The search engine wiby.me gives evidence of that as here you can find many web pages from the days of yore, simple web pages that will work on older machines, that don’t have megabytes of JavaScript or invade your privacy. It was done in the past, and it can still be done now. Mother F*$#ing Website also shows it is possible. Borax Mans Demesne website shows it is possible. It’s browse-able on a 90’s era 486 and with a plain text browser.

The arguments for Gemini seem to fall flat. A web page can be built without any of the cruft and excesses that Gemini seeks to avoid. Gemini’s advocates argue that the real value is a different space, a place where you cannot add these excesses in, and a place where you won’t inadvertently stumble somewhere where these are present. The first argument is also true for Gopher, and the second I don’t think is a strong argument, as you are in control of where you go, and can simply ’turn back’ if you go somewhere you don’t want. Perhaps you are using an old computer or browser, where the wrong page could cause grief or just fall over, but that advantage only is realised if you don’t plan to use the Web at all, at least on that machine. But Gemini uses TLS, which means you’ll struggle to get a client on your old machine and old OS anyway, machines which will run Gopher just fine.

Gemini just seems unnecessary to address these concerns its users have, a new invention to solve a problem which was already solved. It seems to be the product of a particular mindset, and it is this that I will explore in the coming posts. Ultimately, Gemini’s flaws are philosophical, not technical, and these flaws have to do with how we view and approach problems in the modern day. The end result is not only an unncessary protocol, but one which lacks vision. Gemini is just the case study I’m using to highlight wider issues in how we approach problems.

The issues are

• The assumption that people don’t have free choice, or can be cajoled to act a particular way.
• The belief that problems that are behavioural can be fixed with more technology, or otherwise known as “when you have a hammer, every problem appears as a nail”.
• Failing to understand that other people have a different hierarchy of values to you.

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