Gopher Is Not Dead!

Hi folks -- by now, the whole Internet and blogosphere are abuzz about the big announcement:

Gopher Is Not Dead

Yes, as blogger Jason Kottke blogged about yesterday ("Gopher still going"), the small, burrowing rodent still lives.

Gopher was one of the ways people navigated the Internet the early- to mid-1990s, before the Web took off (remember, folks, the Internet is more than just the Web).

It's a text-based way to search and link documents; instead of addresses beginning with "http://", Gopher addresses begin with "gopher://" (Microsoft Internet Explorer doesn't support Gopher addresses directly, though Firefox still does.)

Gopher was superceded by the Web a long time ago, but there are still a few Gopher servers around. It's an interesting snapshot of the Net in the mid-1990s -- check out the kottke.org article for some of the interesting documents that he mined.

I have a personal connection to Gopher, since one of my first jobs in the AOL Internet Connection was to help maintain the Gopher area. Here's a screenshot of the old Gopher main page:

If you're using the AOL client software, I was able to dig up the link to the old Gopher Main Page [AOL in-client link only], which you should be able to get to -- if you do, please note that most of the links won't work, but you can still see the digging gopher animation and read the help text to find out about the glory that was Gopher.

Gopher!

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: gopher, AOL Internet Connection, jason kottke