I'm on a different quest, to create a Memex as originally envisioned. I'll likely set up my own capsule and blog about things there, in parallel with my old blogspot blog.
I've started my own server, and may put it on a separate machine for extra security.
A site that everyone should check out is Antenna: gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/ which is a blog aggregator.
Another nice one is Exploration Surprise: gemini://tilde.team/~sumpygump/explore/ It shows three random domains a day. So you can have a lucky dip.
Why Gemini? Because it's just so cool. It has a little bit of a sub-cultural feel to it. A big difference between Gemini and the regular internet is that people write because there is something they want to say.
I went onto Tumblr just to see what would happen. The first thing that popped up was an annoying window that wanted me to sign up. I clicked on "Maybe Later" instead. Apart from being an annoyance, there's a subtle cue there, isn't there? We'll get you later.
So, the first post that popped up was a picture of a pizza. Why, exactly? Like, what is it the poster is trying to communicate here?
Scroll down a little bit and there's a post by a guy who seems to have an eating disorder. He mixed peanuts with coca cola. That was essentially his whole schtick. Um, OK.
Scroll down a little bit further and I get a pop-up saying "We know you were really enjoying yourself, but we're going to need a little more info." Need? You "need" more info about me, do you?
This is why I like Gemini. There's a whole different mindset. People aren't trying to sell you stuff, scrape your analytics, or be superficial "influencers."
<gemini://gerikson.com/gemlog/gemini-sux/Winding-down.gmi>
I think it's great the community still has buzz, and that it's probably still growing, but it's not for me.
There's nothing inherent in HTML that leads to vapid "influencer" culture. If you host your own server, you're basically doing what Gemini is doing now, but with almost infinitely more flexibility. It's just that people did that in 2005 and it's "old".
https://gemini.envs.net/x/gerikson.com/gemlog/gemini-sux/Win...
Kineto is written by the same person who wrote Gemini (Drew DeVault), showing us that Gemini as a protocol isn't really needed for transport to share Gemini content, which can be just plain HTML anyways.
Here's some info on it with some gif demos. http://uggly.bytester.net
I use lagrange too. It makes gemini pages very pretty to look at with very little effort. Take that, medium. We just need a few top bloggers to take up the medium.
Memex is Vannevar Bush's 1945 vision[1] for a tool that helps people in the way they work. It's human first, relying on machines to adapt to users. It's literally called "As We May Think"
Zettelkasten is a way for force people into certain ways of working an organising their thoughts. It's the opposite of the vision of Memex, and while some might find it useful don't let it pollute the beautiful original vision.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...