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Comment by jxf | Hacker News Reader

Not sure if it's just me, but this did nothing to clear up "what the eff" Gemini was for me (and I also thought it was the crypto company at first). It's clear that it's a protocol but I'm unclear what I do with it or why I would use it. Is there, like, a tangible example or a screenshot that would clarify this?

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The Wikipedia page (linked) is a good introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)

My take

Kinder: an updated Gopher

Snarkier: a technical solution to a social problem

A tool to carve out a space without the social problem. There are phenomena on the web that can just never happen on Gemini, for better or for worse. (E.g. autoloading images) And that will keep the size of the social gathering permanently down and avoid Eternal September.

Exactly. The tech is the gatekeeper to ensure that the social group is self-selecting.

Everything that can be used to solve widespread problems in a lasting way is technical. People snark a lot about social problems and the supposed contrast with merely technical solutions, but the gap at which this gestures is that we do not have enough understanding of societies (or other large groups of people) to engineer socially technical solutions with designed consequences.

After reading more, "an updated Gopher" sounds like a good summary. I am too young to have interacted with Gopher in its heyday, but I've always thought the idea was neat, and I love the idea of a closer-to-text-mode interface to this stuff. Thanks for the comment!

Think "hipster markdown delivery protocol with artificial constraints". A screenshot would vary by the Gemini browser being used.

Yeah that about sums it up pretty well.

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