# Quote - Jan 12, 2021 - About Gemini
## Gemini's minimalism is a feature
It's only January 12, but this could be the most brilliant tech-related post of 2021. It describes what makes Gemini useful and fascinating to some of us.
"Gemini is Useless"
=> gemini://alex.flounder.online/gemlog/2021-01-08-useless.gmi
> Here's some criticism of Gemini from a recent popular post on lobste.rs:
> > So it's borderline useless for all but the simplest use cases, and even there it does a very subpar job. I'd like to have an inline image every now and then, or organize things in some multi-column layouts or the like, or a table. 19th century newspapers could do this, and if your technology can't emulate typography produced on a daily basis - often in a hurry - 150 years ago then your tech is rather limited. These protocols keep shooting themselves in the head with stuff like this, not even in the foot because this entire thing is dead on arrival for all but a few niche tech folk.
=> https://lobste.rs/s/ivryqt/what_is_this_gemini_thing_anyway_why_am_i#c_4tjnxq
> This comment is, essentially, correct. Gemini is useless: it can't do nearly anything that HTTP/HTML can, its design ignores most of the progress in web technology over the last 30 years, and its feature set is so minimalist that it forces the user far outside their normal experience of what the web should be like. Using Gemini, initially, feels disorienting and pointless.
> What I'd argue, though, is that Gemini's "uselessness" is its killer feature, and one that distinguishes it from other attempts at creating a "new web."
> This is how I view Gemini's value: "The Useless Tree" of the internet. Gemini's obscurity and lack of utility means that there are no analytics, no metrics, no ways to go viral, to monetize people's attention, build a career or even a minimally-functional web platform. No sane business would build on top of Gemini, and that is exactly why it is capable of having the character that it does. It is a "resistance-in-place" to the existing web, the attention economy and surveillance capitalism. While the existing web becomes increasingly centralized and commercialized, Gemini will remain as it is, frustrating anyone trying to extract value out of it.
> Gemini can only serve this role by virtue of its simplicity and austerity. Once it is formalized, it won't add any new features. This may annoy users, who are used to a constantly developing and "improving" web, but its lack of new features provides are what allows it to be a genuinely different space online, one that challenges not just our attachment to specific platforms, but our basic relationship with the modern web and technology itself.
### Thoughts
Excerpts from the above lobste.rs post and the alex.flounder.online post with my comments:
* "So it's borderline useless for all but the simplest use cases ..." - GOOD.
* "... even there it does a very subpar job." - WRONG. I like Gemtext, and I don't mind the alleged "barrier" to creating content. Maybe we don't need everything to be easy to use. With Gemini, however, it's easy and comfortable to READ content.
* "I'd like to have an inline image every now and then ..." - NO. I say, use URLs. Instead of bogging down the download and polluting the page with inline images, simply link to the images. If that's unacceptable, then detractors can use the web or build another application layer protocol.
* "... organize things in some multi-column layouts ..." - That's easy to do for simple, columnar data by using the three backtick command in Gemtext. It's a code block. In recent years on the web, I have done this because it's easier than creating tables with Textile, MultiMarkdown, and HTML. And for my writing, I rarely have a need to create columnar output. Other people might have a need to do this often. Then they can either use Gemtext's code block command, stick with the web, or create a new application layer protocol.
* "19th century newspapers could do this [columns], and if your technology can't emulate typography produced on a daily basis - often in a hurry - 150 years ago then your tech is rather limited." - That comment is senseless. Why in the hell would I want new tech today to compare to the newspaper industry from any century? The fact that Gemini is different from the newspaper industry is a huge positive. In my opinion, the damn grid layout thinking that print-based graphic designers brought to the web has contributed to poor READER user experiences. I'm fine with one column layout of TEXT on any device. For web APPLICATIONS, then the grid layout may have a use, but such apps cannot occur on Gemini, and that's wonderful. Typography? That's controlled by the readers on Gemini, not the publishers. Print newspaper readers could not control the typography, but modern tech, such as computers, permit readers to control the typography, which is how it should be today.
* "... your tech is rather limited." - GOOD. That's the point of Gemini, and why it's attractive to me and others. It seems that the lobste.rs commenter overlooked that seemingly obvious point about Gemini. It's a slightly enhanced version of Gopher. Gemini is closer to Gopher than today's web. Gemini might be close to the initial web of the early 1990s. Too many publishers and designers have butchered the reading experience for the web of documents. Today's horrendously bloated app-based web should have been created as a separate application layer protocol around the year 2000 and called bloat://, which would have left the web to be meant mainly for documents and some simple form processing. But the web http(s):// became bloat:// and gemini:// became a lightweight web of documents.
* "These protocols keep shooting themselves in the head with stuff like this ..." - WRONG. Enough people use Gemini to keep me busy with plenty of reading. The reading experience on Gemini is massively more humane than the web.
* "... this entire thing is dead on arrival for all but a few niche tech folk." - GOOD. Again, why does it need to be easy to use? The IndieWeb.org concepts have existed since 2010. I first learned about the IndieWeb in 2013. I used to operate a handful of IndieWeb tech concepts on my website. Despite their best efforts, the IndieWeb's ideas have not been adopted by millions of people. I consider the IndieWeb to be used mainly by a few niche tech folk, but so what? If people don't like the IndieWeb nor Gemini, they they can use or create something else. Plenty of other alternatives exist. Currently, Gemini is my new favorite, having discovered Gemini in May of 2020. Gemini has only existed since June 2019.
* "Gemini is useless: it can't do nearly anything that HTTP/HTML can ..." - Thank goodness for that, otherwise, what's the point? May as well continue to use the web. If people want web features added to Gemini, then they should use the web or build a new application layer protocol. What is NOT needed is for people to bring their bloated ideas to new, simple projects. Thankfully, solderpunk, the creator of Gemini, is keeping things simple.
* "[Gemini's] design ignores most of the progress in web technology over the last 30 years ..." - Again, thank goodness for that. Gemini is meant for READING. It's not meant for applications. I would argue that some or much of the web technology created over the past 30 years has been bad or at least unnecessary. Why did tech people have to stuff some tech into one application layer protocol? Why didn't these so-called geniuses create a new application layer protocol?
* "Gemini's "uselessness" is its killer feature ..." - AGREE.
* "Gemini's obscurity and lack of utility means that there are no analytics, no metrics, no ways to go viral, to monetize people's attention ..." - AWESOME.
* "No sane business would build on top of Gemini ..." - DOUBLY AWESOME.
* "While the existing web becomes increasingly centralized and commercialized, Gemini will remain as it is, frustrating anyone trying to extract value out of it." - FINE.
* "Once [Gemini] is formalized, it won't add any new features." - BRILLIANT. That's a major feature of Gemini. It's okay now. Gopher is about the same as it was nearly 30 years ago, which is why it's hardly used, BUT it IS still used, and apparently, more people use Gopher in 2021 than 10 to 15 years ago. Some people still like to READ TEXT.
* "This may annoy users ..." - That's okay. It's called choice. People have options: continue to use the web or build a new application layer protocol, like solderpunk did when he created Project Gemini.
* "... who are used to a constantly developing and "improving" web ... - Hah! Yes, "improving" needed to be placed within quotes when discussing the web. Unfortunately, using the web for document reading has been "improved" to real uselessness. Modern web design has created horrible, inhumane reading experiences. And sometimes, it's difficult to control the web reading experience on the client side. And think about the tools needed to create a human web reading experience. This is absurd. This is why Gemini is superior for reading because a human reading experience is the default experience on Gemini.
### Gemini FAQ
Excerpts from:
=> gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi
> Gemini is a new (the project started in June 2019) application-level internet protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which facilitates linking between files. You may think of Gemini as "the web, stripped right back to its essence" or as "Gopher, souped up and modernised a little", depending upon your perspective. Gemini may be of interest to people who are:
>
> Opposed to the web's ubiquitous user tracking
>
> Tired of obnoxious adverts, autoplaying videos and other misfeatures
>
> Interested in low-power computing and/or low-speed networks
>
> Gemini is intended to be simple, but not necessarily as simple as possible. Instead, the design strives to maximise its "power to weight ratio", while keeping its weight within acceptable limits. Gemini is also intended to be very privacy conscious, to be difficult to extend in the future (so that it will *stay* simple and privacy conscious), and to be compatible with a "do it yourself" computing ethos. For this last reason, Gemini is technically very familiar and conservative: it's a protocol in the traditional client-server request-response paradigm, and is built on mature, standardised technology like URIs, MIME media types, and TLS.
>
> Do you really think you can replace the web?
>
> Not for a minute! Nor does anybody involved with Gemini want to destroy Gopherspace. Gemini is not intended to replace either Gopher or the web, but to co-exist peacefully alongside them as one more option which people can freely choose to use if it suits them.
>
> 2.4 Which shortcomings of the web does Gemini overcome?
>
> Gemini contains no equivalent of User-Agent or Referer headers, and the request format is not extensible so that these cannot be shoehorned in later. In fact, Gemini requests contain nothing other than the URL of the resource being requested. This goes a very long way to preventing user tracking.
That's a feature. If people dislike this feature, then they can use the web or build something else.
> The "native content type" of Gemini (analogous to HTML for HTTP(S) or plain text for Gopher) never requires additional network transactions (there are no in-line images, external stylesheets, fonts or scripts, no iframes, etc.). This allows for quick browsing even on slow connections and for full awareness of and control over which hosts connections are made to.
Another huge feature of Gemini.
> The native content type of Gemini is strictly a document, with no facility for scripting, allowing for easy browsing even on old computers with limited processor speed or memory.
Feature.
More from the lengthy Gemini FAQ:
> 2.5 Why not just use a subset of HTTP and HTML?
>
> Many people are confused as to why it's worth creating a new protocol to address perceived problems with optional, non-essential features of the web. Just because websites *can* track users and run CPU-hogging Javsacript and pull in useless multi-megabyte header images or even larger autoplaying videos, doesn't mean they *have* to. Why not just build non-evil websites using the existing technology?
>
> Of course, this is possible. "The Gemini experience" is roughly equivalent to HTTP where the only request header is "Host" and the only response header is "Content-type" and HTML where the only tags are ``, `
`, ``, `` through ``, `` and `- ` and `
` - and the https://gemini.circumlunar.space website offers pretty much this experience. We know it can be done.
>
> The problem is that deciding upon a strictly limited subset of HTTP and HTML, slapping a label on it and calling it a day would do almost nothing to create a clearly demarcated space where people can go to consume *only* that kind of content in *only* that kind of way. It's impossible to know in advance whether what's on the other side of a https:// URL will be within the subset or outside it. It's very tedious to verify that a website claiming to use only the subset actually does, as many of the features we want to avoid are invisible (but not harmless!) to the user. It's difficult or even impossible to deactivate support for all the unwanted features in mainstream browsers, so if somebody breaks the rules you'll pay the consequences. Writing a dumbed down web browser which gracefully ignores all the unwanted features is much harder than writing a Gemini client from scratch. Even if you did it, you'd have a very difficult time discovering the minuscule fraction of websites it could render.
>
> Alternative, simple-by-design protocols like Gopher and Gemini create alternative, simple-by-design spaces with obvious boundaries and hard restrictions. You know for sure when you enter Geminispace, and you can know for sure and in advance when following a certain link will cause you leave it. While you're there, you know for sure and in advance that everybody else there is playing by the same rules. You can relax and get on with your browsing, and follow links to sites you've never heard of before, which just popped up yesterday, and be confident that they won't try to track you or serve you garbage because they *can't*. You can do all this with a client you wrote yourself, so you *know* you can trust it. It's a very different, much more liberating and much more empowering experience than trying to carve out a tiny, invisible sub-sub-sub-sub-space of the web.
That's a great explanation to the idea of creating simple websites. BTW, Google created a subset of HTML or something that they called Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Regarding a web subset, I can use the Links2 web browser to guarantee me a safe and humane web reading experience on all websites that do not require client-side JavaScript to display TEXT. Links2 permits users to control the typography of all websites, like Gemini offers Gemini browsers, such as Castor, Kristall, and more.
For Gemini, I mainly use the Kristall browser because of its easy manner in controlling typography. It's quite audacious of web-of-documents-type publishers to believe that they know what's best for me, regarding typography. So-called modern web browsers should easily permit readers to control the typography of websites, similar to how eBook readers do this. Sometimes, the reader mode option is unavailable for some web pages that I read with Safari on my old iPhone.
But for mobile and desktop web browsers, all of the crap offered by a webpage is downloaded before the reader can switch to reader mode. Readability options don't stop the megabytes of unnecessary crapware that users download.
This is why I read the web on mobile and on my laptop with JavaScript disabled most of the time. Or it's reason why I READ websites with the Links2 web browser on my Linux laptop. Links2 does not support CSS nor JavaScript. The web and our connection to the internet is incredibly fast when using Links2. The Links2 web browser is small and lightweight and therefore a fast application.
### Jan 27, 2021
This was a Jan 11, 2021 post about the above.
=>
> Using the 150 yo analogy, Gemini is the typewriter, the client the typesetter.
> The web can't even settle on darkmode vs day mode (and each server tries to set it server-side), let alone things like fontsize, contrast, margins, line lengths etc.
> Reading web pages on a modern browser is like reading a ransom note, all cut & pasted from various magazines.
> Gemini finally solved the semantic vs presentation problem.
> No people, no smiling fakery. Just a beautiful, big wall of ice-cold text. The slogan underneath: It's the real thing. Period. Gemini. Period. In Helvetica. Period. Any questions? Of course not. Read Gemini. Period. Simple.
-30-
``` dir : 2021/01/12
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