1
00:00:04,440 --> 00:00:12,479
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,

2
00:00:12,480 --> 00:00:15,880
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

3
00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:19,520
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech

4
00:00:19,640 --> 00:00:24,279
Speaker 1: are you? It is time for a tech Stuff classics episode.

5
00:00:24,880 --> 00:00:28,639
Speaker 1: This episode is called What Was Gopher? And it originally

6
00:00:28,720 --> 00:00:35,640
Speaker 1: published on April nineteenth, twenty seventeen. Hope you enjoy and

7
00:00:35,720 --> 00:00:39,600
Speaker 1: you guys have been crushing at sending tons of suggestions

8
00:00:39,600 --> 00:00:41,560
Speaker 1: my way, and I just want to say I really

9
00:00:41,600 --> 00:00:44,479
Speaker 1: appreciate it. So remember, if you have a suggestion for

10
00:00:44,520 --> 00:00:46,920
Speaker 1: a topic I should cover, send me the message the

11
00:00:46,960 --> 00:00:51,080
Speaker 1: emails text stuff at hellstuffworks dot com. But this week's

12
00:00:51,159 --> 00:00:54,600
Speaker 1: listener mail episode comes to us from Ryan, who says,

13
00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:58,480
Speaker 1: please do an episode about the Gopher protocol, such a

14
00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:01,920
Speaker 1: different approach to utilize the Internet that no one knows today.

15
00:01:02,800 --> 00:01:06,240
Speaker 1: And so today we're gonna walk back in Internet history

16
00:01:06,360 --> 00:01:09,920
Speaker 1: and learn all about the Gopher protocol. But first it

17
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:14,520
Speaker 1: kind of benefits us to remember what exactly the Internet is.

18
00:01:14,720 --> 00:01:17,800
Speaker 1: And trust me, this is important in the grand scheme

19
00:01:17,840 --> 00:01:20,640
Speaker 1: of things. But I'll be nice and high level and

20
00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:22,640
Speaker 1: brief about it, so when you get down to it,

21
00:01:23,040 --> 00:01:25,839
Speaker 1: the Internet is essentially just a bunch of computing devices

22
00:01:25,880 --> 00:01:28,280
Speaker 1: that are all connected to each other, and that's it. Really.

23
00:01:28,680 --> 00:01:31,240
Speaker 1: There's a lot of infrastructure there that allows this to happen,

24
00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:34,200
Speaker 1: but ultimately it's a bunch of computers that are talking

25
00:01:34,200 --> 00:01:37,119
Speaker 1: to each other. It's a network of networks using various

26
00:01:37,120 --> 00:01:40,920
Speaker 1: types of connections and protocols to send and receive communications.

27
00:01:41,800 --> 00:01:44,360
Speaker 1: But when you just break it down to its simplest

28
00:01:44,360 --> 00:01:49,320
Speaker 1: of terms, you're really talking about a bunch of interconnected machines. Now,

29
00:01:49,360 --> 00:01:54,840
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, we can classify most of these machines as

30
00:01:54,920 --> 00:01:59,240
Speaker 1: either servers or clients. Now there are other machines as well,

31
00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:02,920
Speaker 1: like route and switches and stuff, but I'm mostly talking

32
00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:05,760
Speaker 1: about the devices that are directly communicating with each other

33
00:02:05,880 --> 00:02:10,160
Speaker 1: rather than the ones that facilitate that communication. So as

34
00:02:10,160 --> 00:02:12,800
Speaker 1: a server, well, it does exactly what it sounds like.

35
00:02:12,840 --> 00:02:18,760
Speaker 1: It does. It serves information. Clients request information. So your

36
00:02:18,760 --> 00:02:21,679
Speaker 1: smartphone or your computer or your tablet that you use

37
00:02:21,760 --> 00:02:24,720
Speaker 1: to serf the Internet or read email or whatever it

38
00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:27,840
Speaker 1: is you do online, that is a client. The servers

39
00:02:28,120 --> 00:02:31,480
Speaker 1: are the machines that contain all the information you're looking

40
00:02:31,520 --> 00:02:35,040
Speaker 1: at and serve it up to you. And the Internet

41
00:02:35,240 --> 00:02:38,280
Speaker 1: is older than the World Wide Web. A lot of people,

42
00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:42,040
Speaker 1: probably not as many today as were around for like

43
00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:44,680
Speaker 1: the late nineties, but a lot of people would equate

44
00:02:44,760 --> 00:02:47,200
Speaker 1: the World Wide Web with the Internet, like the two

45
00:02:47,240 --> 00:02:50,040
Speaker 1: are synonymous, and that's not really true. The Web is

46
00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:52,960
Speaker 1: really just a layer on top of the Internet. It's

47
00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:55,960
Speaker 1: an interface that makes it easy to access and interact

48
00:02:56,040 --> 00:02:59,800
Speaker 1: with information, but it's just one part of the Internet.

49
00:03:00,040 --> 00:03:02,600
Speaker 1: Before it came along, people were facing a bit of

50
00:03:02,639 --> 00:03:08,200
Speaker 1: a challenge. So imagine you've got this network of networks.

51
00:03:08,360 --> 00:03:13,800
Speaker 1: Information is on thousands of servers around the world. You

52
00:03:14,600 --> 00:03:18,000
Speaker 1: want to get access to some specific information, like a

53
00:03:18,120 --> 00:03:22,160
Speaker 1: very particular file. There's one file that you want to get,

54
00:03:22,200 --> 00:03:26,200
Speaker 1: But how do you track down that file? How do

55
00:03:26,240 --> 00:03:30,320
Speaker 1: you know which computer out there in this vast network

56
00:03:30,320 --> 00:03:33,160
Speaker 1: of networks. How do you know which one actually holds

57
00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:37,240
Speaker 1: the file you want. You can't just scream out, hey,

58
00:03:37,480 --> 00:03:39,720
Speaker 1: I need this one text file. You've got to know

59
00:03:39,800 --> 00:03:42,280
Speaker 1: where it is in order to retrieve it. So the

60
00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:45,640
Speaker 1: way this would work normally is that you'd send a

61
00:03:45,680 --> 00:03:49,720
Speaker 1: message from your computer across the network to the specific

62
00:03:49,880 --> 00:03:54,880
Speaker 1: server in question. So ideally you would know what computer

63
00:03:55,280 --> 00:03:59,240
Speaker 1: hosts your file, and you would use some method of

64
00:03:59,440 --> 00:04:03,320
Speaker 1: connecting to that server. Maybe you're using telnet, maybe you're

65
00:04:03,400 --> 00:04:07,680
Speaker 1: using FTP file Transfer protocol, but you're using something to

66
00:04:08,040 --> 00:04:10,600
Speaker 1: send a message to that server and then return the

67
00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:13,600
Speaker 1: server responds to you, and then you request access to

68
00:04:13,640 --> 00:04:17,000
Speaker 1: that file. It's really just that the message you send

69
00:04:17,120 --> 00:04:20,320
Speaker 1: is just a request for information stored on that server.

70
00:04:21,200 --> 00:04:25,120
Speaker 1: And if you have access authorized access to that information.

71
00:04:25,200 --> 00:04:27,120
Speaker 1: In other words, if it's not protected by like a

72
00:04:27,160 --> 00:04:30,400
Speaker 1: password or something that you don't have, the server would

73
00:04:30,440 --> 00:04:34,680
Speaker 1: send that information back across the internet to you. But

74
00:04:34,760 --> 00:04:38,039
Speaker 1: what happens if you don't know which computer holds the

75
00:04:38,080 --> 00:04:41,560
Speaker 1: information you want, how do you get access to it?

76
00:04:42,680 --> 00:04:44,120
Speaker 1: Back in the old days, this would be kind of

77
00:04:44,160 --> 00:04:48,080
Speaker 1: like picking up a telephone to call somebody. Let's say

78
00:04:48,080 --> 00:04:50,760
Speaker 1: you're trying to call me, only you don't have my

79
00:04:50,839 --> 00:04:52,919
Speaker 1: phone number. I never gave it to you. I'm not

80
00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:55,560
Speaker 1: listed anywhere, so how do you call me? There are

81
00:04:55,640 --> 00:04:59,120
Speaker 1: millions of phone numbers out there. If you knew my

82
00:04:59,200 --> 00:05:01,240
Speaker 1: phone number, everything would be just fine because you could

83
00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:03,440
Speaker 1: just dial it directly. But since you don't know my

84
00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:06,839
Speaker 1: number and there's no directory to consult, you're faced with

85
00:05:06,880 --> 00:05:09,040
Speaker 1: a nearly impossible task. What do you do, just start

86
00:05:09,120 --> 00:05:12,520
Speaker 1: randomly hitting buttons until the right person picks up. Well,

87
00:05:12,520 --> 00:05:16,279
Speaker 1: that was the problem facing the Internet. It arose because

88
00:05:16,640 --> 00:05:19,680
Speaker 1: the network became more complicated. Just as in the old days,

89
00:05:19,720 --> 00:05:23,200
Speaker 1: you might have very few telephones in a single town.

90
00:05:23,680 --> 00:05:26,200
Speaker 1: Like I'm talking the real old days. When telephones first

91
00:05:26,200 --> 00:05:28,719
Speaker 1: became popular, you didn't need to worry about phone numbers.

92
00:05:28,880 --> 00:05:31,880
Speaker 1: Maybe three people in town had a phone. These days

93
00:05:32,200 --> 00:05:34,040
Speaker 1: you got to worry about it because millions of people

94
00:05:34,040 --> 00:05:36,160
Speaker 1: have phones. Well, same thing was true with the network

95
00:05:36,279 --> 00:05:39,920
Speaker 1: of networks. As more computers came online, as more systems

96
00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:43,520
Speaker 1: joined the Internet, it became more difficult to track very

97
00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:48,760
Speaker 1: specific stuff down. So before the Internet, there was a

98
00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:54,080
Speaker 1: sort of a precursor, not really the Internet. Before there

99
00:05:54,120 --> 00:05:57,600
Speaker 1: was an Internet, but it was a system of networked

100
00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:02,120
Speaker 1: computers called ARPA NEET now the arpenet. That was a

101
00:06:02,200 --> 00:06:04,960
Speaker 1: project from the Department of Defense in the United States

102
00:06:05,560 --> 00:06:10,840
Speaker 1: and was something that required a bunch of computer scientists

103
00:06:10,920 --> 00:06:16,240
Speaker 1: to sit down and work out protocols. It was essentially

104
00:06:16,279 --> 00:06:20,279
Speaker 1: a big but relatively simple network of computers. Now I

105
00:06:20,360 --> 00:06:23,680
Speaker 1: say simple because if you look at the Internet by

106
00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:27,760
Speaker 1: comparison as a network of networks. It is far more

107
00:06:27,839 --> 00:06:32,039
Speaker 1: complex than what Arpenet was, but I am not casting

108
00:06:32,040 --> 00:06:37,359
Speaker 1: aspersions on arpenet. It was still incredibly sophisticated, particularly for

109
00:06:37,480 --> 00:06:42,280
Speaker 1: its time. It allowed people working on different computers that

110
00:06:42,440 --> 00:06:46,880
Speaker 1: used different operating systems, different languages, the ability to communicate

111
00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:51,680
Speaker 1: with each other. And that's phenomenal because usually, you know,

112
00:06:52,040 --> 00:06:53,880
Speaker 1: these are like computers that if you were to connect

113
00:06:53,960 --> 00:06:55,880
Speaker 1: directly to one another, they would not be able to

114
00:06:55,880 --> 00:06:59,800
Speaker 1: communicate with each other. They were fundamentally different. So they

115
00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:02,520
Speaker 1: designers of the ARPINET had to figure out a set

116
00:07:02,600 --> 00:07:05,960
Speaker 1: of rules that all these different types of computers could

117
00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:10,440
Speaker 1: follow in order to exchange information with one another. So

118
00:07:10,520 --> 00:07:13,840
Speaker 1: that required a lot of work to create these protocols

119
00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:16,600
Speaker 1: or sets of rules to facilitate communication. And I've talked

120
00:07:16,640 --> 00:07:19,720
Speaker 1: about arpinet before. If you want to hear a lot

121
00:07:19,760 --> 00:07:22,640
Speaker 1: more about it, you can track down the classic episode.

122
00:07:22,640 --> 00:07:26,800
Speaker 1: It originally published in twenty twelve. It was titled Happy

123
00:07:26,960 --> 00:07:31,280
Speaker 1: Fathers of the Internet Day and then Chris Palette and

124
00:07:31,320 --> 00:07:35,320
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about the people who designed the

125
00:07:35,400 --> 00:07:39,560
Speaker 1: various protocols that allow Internet communication to happen. Well, anyway,

126
00:07:39,640 --> 00:07:43,440
Speaker 1: two of the protocols in question during the days of

127
00:07:43,560 --> 00:07:48,720
Speaker 1: ARPINET were the Transmission Control Protocol or TCP, developed in

128
00:07:48,800 --> 00:07:53,040
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, and the Internet Protocol or IP in

129
00:07:53,160 --> 00:07:56,760
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. These are almost always grouped together whenever

130
00:07:56,800 --> 00:08:01,120
Speaker 1: anyone talks about Internet protocols, they'll say TCPIP, But they

131
00:08:01,120 --> 00:08:05,480
Speaker 1: are technically two different sets of rules that together end

132
00:08:05,600 --> 00:08:10,200
Speaker 1: up guiding the computers on how to communicate across this

133
00:08:10,280 --> 00:08:12,760
Speaker 1: network of networks. These are the rules that gave arpnet

134
00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:18,520
Speaker 1: that ability to create global communication across various different computers.

135
00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:23,160
Speaker 1: The two protocols were officially adopted by ARPINET in nineteen

136
00:08:23,200 --> 00:08:26,480
Speaker 1: eighty three, so while they were developed in the seventies,

137
00:08:26,560 --> 00:08:30,440
Speaker 1: it wasn't officially adopted until nineteen eighty three. Now, they

138
00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:34,400
Speaker 1: were being used before that, but you know, ARPINET was

139
00:08:34,440 --> 00:08:39,520
Speaker 1: a government thing, and just like you would suspect, it

140
00:08:39,559 --> 00:08:43,400
Speaker 1: moves super fast because it's government. Well, the following year

141
00:08:43,600 --> 00:08:47,120
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, a lot of things happen. We got

142
00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:52,040
Speaker 1: that really killer Apple Mac commercial that was like the

143
00:08:52,160 --> 00:08:55,560
Speaker 1: Orwellian nineteen eighty four that was phenomenal. But also Sun

144
00:08:55,760 --> 00:09:01,760
Speaker 1: Microsystems unveiled a system called the Network Filing System or

145
00:09:01,920 --> 00:09:05,920
Speaker 1: NFS that was sort of like a file directory and

146
00:09:06,040 --> 00:09:11,640
Speaker 1: storage system for networked computers running on a heterogeneous Unix environment.

147
00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:14,760
Speaker 1: So you had to have a bunch of computers running

148
00:09:14,800 --> 00:09:19,280
Speaker 1: the same Unix implementation essentially, or same version I guess

149
00:09:19,280 --> 00:09:22,040
Speaker 1: I should say not implementation, but the same version of

150
00:09:22,120 --> 00:09:25,520
Speaker 1: Unix across all these different machines. And it was kind

151
00:09:25,559 --> 00:09:28,440
Speaker 1: of like your basic file management system you'd have on

152
00:09:28,520 --> 00:09:31,319
Speaker 1: a personal computer. So if you've ever used a computer

153
00:09:31,400 --> 00:09:35,679
Speaker 1: that had a variation of this, like Windows File Explorer

154
00:09:35,760 --> 00:09:40,720
Speaker 1: is a good example. You typically have a hierarchy of files.

155
00:09:40,880 --> 00:09:44,400
Speaker 1: You'll have like a top level selection of files. If

156
00:09:44,400 --> 00:09:47,080
Speaker 1: you go into one of those, you might see folders,

157
00:09:47,120 --> 00:09:50,839
Speaker 1: like sub folders underneath that main heading. Go into that one,

158
00:09:50,880 --> 00:09:53,360
Speaker 1: you'll see more sub folders, maybe some files, that kind

159
00:09:53,400 --> 00:09:56,360
Speaker 1: of stuff. Well, it was essentially that, but for an

160
00:09:56,520 --> 00:09:59,760
Speaker 1: entire network of computers. So you could share information between

161
00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:04,080
Speaker 1: diferent computers on the system by saving files to this

162
00:10:04,360 --> 00:10:08,120
Speaker 1: network drive, something that's very familiar to most of us today,

163
00:10:08,160 --> 00:10:12,720
Speaker 1: but back then was really new. And then obviously you

164
00:10:12,720 --> 00:10:17,120
Speaker 1: could retrieve files from the appropriate directory on that same system.

165
00:10:17,679 --> 00:10:21,000
Speaker 1: Also in nineteen eighty four, a team over at Carnegie

166
00:10:21,080 --> 00:10:27,000
Speaker 1: Mellon University released the Andrew File System or AFS. Now. Originally,

167
00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:30,920
Speaker 1: the AFS provided Carnegie Mellon students a campus wide file

168
00:10:31,040 --> 00:10:35,280
Speaker 1: directory system, and later on a company called Transarc sort

169
00:10:35,320 --> 00:10:39,920
Speaker 1: of spun off and turned this into a commercial product. Now,

170
00:10:39,920 --> 00:10:44,360
Speaker 1: these file systems allowed users to access files on other computers,

171
00:10:44,840 --> 00:10:49,040
Speaker 1: but they also came with a really steep learning curve.

172
00:10:49,160 --> 00:10:53,520
Speaker 1: If you weren't particularly computer savvy, it was really challenging

173
00:10:53,679 --> 00:10:56,880
Speaker 1: to navigate through these file directories. It would be kind

174
00:10:56,920 --> 00:10:59,640
Speaker 1: of like taking someone to a computer and it has

175
00:10:59,679 --> 00:11:03,160
Speaker 1: all line commands and the person had never really worked

176
00:11:03,160 --> 00:11:06,040
Speaker 1: with a line command interface. They'd only worked with graphics

177
00:11:06,600 --> 00:11:08,440
Speaker 1: by line command. I mean, you have to type in

178
00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:12,080
Speaker 1: the command and file names you want in order to

179
00:11:12,520 --> 00:11:15,600
Speaker 1: access stuff. Well, if that's what you've been doing the

180
00:11:15,600 --> 00:11:17,959
Speaker 1: whole time, it's not so bad. You start to pick

181
00:11:18,040 --> 00:11:20,720
Speaker 1: up on it. Even as new systems are brought on,

182
00:11:20,800 --> 00:11:23,800
Speaker 1: you can kind of adapt to it pretty quickly because

183
00:11:23,800 --> 00:11:26,600
Speaker 1: you already have that basic level of knowledge. But for

184
00:11:26,640 --> 00:11:30,360
Speaker 1: someone brand new to computers, it was really intimidating. It

185
00:11:30,400 --> 00:11:34,320
Speaker 1: felt like you needed to have a lexicon of different

186
00:11:34,360 --> 00:11:36,840
Speaker 1: commands at your disposal all the time, and a lot

187
00:11:36,880 --> 00:11:39,200
Speaker 1: of people would have to use cheat sheets and take

188
00:11:39,240 --> 00:11:41,760
Speaker 1: a look at those constantly so that they could figure

189
00:11:41,800 --> 00:11:45,240
Speaker 1: out just how to navigate a computer. It wasn't very

190
00:11:45,360 --> 00:11:49,160
Speaker 1: user friendly, and it was really hard to find what

191
00:11:49,240 --> 00:11:51,840
Speaker 1: you were looking for if you didn't already know where

192
00:11:51,880 --> 00:11:55,079
Speaker 1: to start from the beginning. The trick with filing systems

193
00:11:55,120 --> 00:11:59,080
Speaker 1: is that you have to understand the organizational strategy. So

194
00:11:59,120 --> 00:12:01,280
Speaker 1: not only do you have to understand the language to

195
00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:05,440
Speaker 1: navigate the system, you also have to understand the person

196
00:12:05,440 --> 00:12:08,359
Speaker 1: who set it up in the first place. So there's

197
00:12:08,520 --> 00:12:11,320
Speaker 1: a bit of machine savvy you have to have, but

198
00:12:11,320 --> 00:12:13,679
Speaker 1: there's also how well do I know the person who

199
00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:16,200
Speaker 1: set up this filing system and how does that person's

200
00:12:16,240 --> 00:12:19,160
Speaker 1: brain work, Because maybe they'll set things up in a

201
00:12:19,200 --> 00:12:22,400
Speaker 1: different way then I would set it up, and if

202
00:12:22,440 --> 00:12:24,840
Speaker 1: I were to try and navigate using my common sense,

203
00:12:24,880 --> 00:12:27,600
Speaker 1: I might find it frustrating. So here's an example of

204
00:12:27,640 --> 00:12:30,199
Speaker 1: what I mean. Back in the day, I used to

205
00:12:30,320 --> 00:12:33,880
Speaker 1: organize all of my DVDs by genre and then by

206
00:12:33,920 --> 00:12:37,600
Speaker 1: alphabetical order by title. So I had all my action

207
00:12:37,760 --> 00:12:40,720
Speaker 1: films in one place, I had all my horror movies

208
00:12:40,760 --> 00:12:43,839
Speaker 1: in another place, all my Tim Curry movies were together

209
00:12:43,920 --> 00:12:46,040
Speaker 1: all that kind of thing. You know, Tim Curry is

210
00:12:46,080 --> 00:12:49,360
Speaker 1: a genre unto himself National Treasure. But if you didn't

211
00:12:49,480 --> 00:12:52,680
Speaker 1: know that I did that, and you didn't know where

212
00:12:52,679 --> 00:12:56,120
Speaker 1: one section began or ended, you could have trouble finding

213
00:12:56,120 --> 00:12:59,080
Speaker 1: a specific title. Maybe you would have had a totally

214
00:12:59,120 --> 00:13:02,920
Speaker 1: different approach. You would have organized everything alphabetically from the start,

215
00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:05,560
Speaker 1: so it didn't matter what genre is, and you would know,

216
00:13:05,679 --> 00:13:08,120
Speaker 1: all right, well, the title i'm looking for starts with

217
00:13:08,160 --> 00:13:09,520
Speaker 1: a D, so I need to find the d's and

218
00:13:09,559 --> 00:13:11,920
Speaker 1: it's going to be there. Or maybe you would even

219
00:13:12,240 --> 00:13:16,360
Speaker 1: have a more crazy organizational strategy, maybe you would organize

220
00:13:16,360 --> 00:13:21,320
Speaker 1: everything chronologically by release date, which would confound everyone but

221
00:13:21,400 --> 00:13:24,760
Speaker 1: the geekiest of film buffs. The point is that these

222
00:13:24,800 --> 00:13:28,400
Speaker 1: file systems back in the day, with these network drives,

223
00:13:28,400 --> 00:13:31,760
Speaker 1: they weren't always intuitive. Even if you weren't immediately put

224
00:13:31,760 --> 00:13:34,280
Speaker 1: off by the interface, you might still not be able

225
00:13:34,280 --> 00:13:38,280
Speaker 1: to find what you're looking for. Now. Later still came

226
00:13:38,679 --> 00:13:43,520
Speaker 1: Alan Mtaje's Archie tool, and he was a University of

227
00:13:43,600 --> 00:13:47,760
Speaker 1: Montreal employee student. You know, he had gone from one

228
00:13:47,800 --> 00:13:50,680
Speaker 1: to the other really when he invented this tool to

229
00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:53,880
Speaker 1: search for files on the Internet that would be transferred

230
00:13:54,040 --> 00:13:58,600
Speaker 1: via FTP file Transfer Protocol. So instead of requiring the

231
00:13:58,679 --> 00:14:01,120
Speaker 1: user to know a direct path, you just had to

232
00:14:01,160 --> 00:14:06,040
Speaker 1: know the name of the file, how was the file named. Now,

233
00:14:06,040 --> 00:14:09,880
Speaker 1: that still isn't ideal, because I'm sure you've encountered files

234
00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:12,760
Speaker 1: that had weird or non intuitive names that may have

235
00:14:12,800 --> 00:14:15,880
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with what the file actually was about.

236
00:14:17,040 --> 00:14:19,800
Speaker 1: So you had to know precisely how the file was

237
00:14:19,880 --> 00:14:21,720
Speaker 1: named or else it really didn't do you any good.

238
00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:24,280
Speaker 1: But at least it didn't require you to also know

239
00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:28,280
Speaker 1: the full path name of where a file was, and

240
00:14:28,360 --> 00:14:33,120
Speaker 1: it allowed you to actually do a search across the Internet. Now,

241
00:14:33,160 --> 00:14:35,680
Speaker 1: once the Web came along, and I'll talk a lot

242
00:14:35,760 --> 00:14:38,080
Speaker 1: more about the World Wide Web later on in this episode,

243
00:14:39,120 --> 00:14:42,960
Speaker 1: and once programmers began building search engines, this problem became

244
00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:47,000
Speaker 1: less difficult. Right. Search engines started to make things much

245
00:14:47,040 --> 00:14:50,600
Speaker 1: easier for people. The web made navigation more intuitive. It

246
00:14:50,640 --> 00:14:53,160
Speaker 1: made it more accessible to people who weren't experienced with

247
00:14:53,200 --> 00:14:57,320
Speaker 1: computers or had inside knowledge of directory organization. But in

248
00:14:57,320 --> 00:15:01,440
Speaker 1: those in between times before the web up, but after

249
00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:07,680
Speaker 1: the Internet came online, that's when Gopher emerged. Now, there

250
00:15:07,680 --> 00:15:12,600
Speaker 1: were several developers behind Gopher. Really six people in total,

251
00:15:12,760 --> 00:15:15,800
Speaker 1: and one of the more important ones I shouldn't even

252
00:15:15,800 --> 00:15:18,200
Speaker 1: say it that way. One of the leads, I should say,

253
00:15:18,200 --> 00:15:21,280
Speaker 1: because all six were important. One of the leads was

254
00:15:21,320 --> 00:15:25,480
Speaker 1: Mark McHale, and Mkale attended the University of Minnesota. Actually

255
00:15:25,520 --> 00:15:28,080
Speaker 1: they were all part of the University of Minnesota, but

256
00:15:28,400 --> 00:15:30,880
Speaker 1: he had attended as a student, earning a bachelor's degree

257
00:15:30,880 --> 00:15:34,400
Speaker 1: in chemistry in nineteen seventy nine. But while he earned

258
00:15:34,400 --> 00:15:36,440
Speaker 1: his degree in chemistry, he would actually go on to

259
00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:41,280
Speaker 1: join the campus microcomputer Center as a programmer, and by

260
00:15:41,280 --> 00:15:43,600
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties he was leading a team of

261
00:15:43,640 --> 00:15:47,800
Speaker 1: programmers and together they built an email client called pop mail,

262
00:15:48,480 --> 00:15:51,360
Speaker 1: first for the Macintosh computer and then later on for

263
00:15:51,480 --> 00:15:56,280
Speaker 1: the PC platform. The POP in pop mail stands for

264
00:15:56,400 --> 00:16:00,640
Speaker 1: post Office Protocol. So the way worked was that you

265
00:16:00,720 --> 00:16:02,440
Speaker 1: had a server that would kind of act like a

266
00:16:02,520 --> 00:16:07,240
Speaker 1: virtual post office. You would whenever you were checking email

267
00:16:07,320 --> 00:16:10,440
Speaker 1: or sending email, it would involve a virtual visit to

268
00:16:10,600 --> 00:16:14,080
Speaker 1: this post office. You could drop off and receive mail there.

269
00:16:14,440 --> 00:16:16,400
Speaker 1: So if you wanted to send a message through your

270
00:16:16,440 --> 00:16:21,360
Speaker 1: popmail client, the client, as in your computer, the workstation

271
00:16:21,480 --> 00:16:24,680
Speaker 1: you are using, would relay the message through the post

272
00:16:24,680 --> 00:16:29,280
Speaker 1: office server, which would then direct the message onto your destination.

273
00:16:30,320 --> 00:16:34,720
Speaker 1: When retreating messages, you would actually be going to this

274
00:16:34,920 --> 00:16:39,120
Speaker 1: popmail server to pull the emails off of it in

275
00:16:39,200 --> 00:16:41,960
Speaker 1: order to read them. So they were the ones who

276
00:16:42,080 --> 00:16:45,040
Speaker 1: developed this, and it was a very popular type of

277
00:16:45,600 --> 00:16:48,960
Speaker 1: way of getting a hold of email. The next big

278
00:16:49,040 --> 00:16:52,720
Speaker 1: project that this team tackled was creating an interface for

279
00:16:52,840 --> 00:16:57,360
Speaker 1: navigating the university's local network. So the question was, how

280
00:16:57,480 --> 00:17:00,960
Speaker 1: can we find whatever we're looking for? How do we

281
00:17:01,200 --> 00:17:04,080
Speaker 1: organize all this information we have in a way that

282
00:17:04,160 --> 00:17:07,520
Speaker 1: makes sense because they could see that the Internet was

283
00:17:07,880 --> 00:17:11,320
Speaker 1: creating this incredible opportunity to share information, but it was

284
00:17:11,320 --> 00:17:15,560
Speaker 1: getting increasingly difficult to find stuff and to organize stuff

285
00:17:15,600 --> 00:17:19,520
Speaker 1: properly because there were more and more computers coming onto

286
00:17:19,560 --> 00:17:23,000
Speaker 1: the system and it just made things even more complicated.

287
00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:29,840
Speaker 1: So together Mikhail Bob Alberti, Farad Anklesaria, Paul Linda, and

288
00:17:29,920 --> 00:17:33,840
Speaker 1: Daniel Tory began to work to develop a solution, and

289
00:17:33,880 --> 00:17:38,119
Speaker 1: as it turned out, their solution had applications far beyond

290
00:17:38,440 --> 00:17:41,040
Speaker 1: the campus they worked on. In fact, it would turn

291
00:17:41,119 --> 00:17:45,239
Speaker 1: out their solution had applications outside of the campus they

292
00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:49,840
Speaker 1: worked on before it actually was implemented by the campus itself.

293
00:17:50,040 --> 00:17:54,040
Speaker 1: It would work across the Internet in general. Now I'm

294
00:17:54,040 --> 00:17:57,199
Speaker 1: going to jump into what they did in just a second,

295
00:17:57,359 --> 00:18:00,240
Speaker 1: but before I do that, let's take a quick break

296
00:18:00,440 --> 00:18:11,880
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. So the team got to work

297
00:18:12,119 --> 00:18:14,919
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one. They knew that they wanted a

298
00:18:14,960 --> 00:18:18,720
Speaker 1: system that could organize information in an intuitive way, giving

299
00:18:18,800 --> 00:18:22,800
Speaker 1: users an opportunity to navigate the information they needed quickly.

300
00:18:23,359 --> 00:18:26,159
Speaker 1: They wanted it to be a client server system. This

301
00:18:26,320 --> 00:18:30,639
Speaker 1: was really important to them. What they perhaps the biggest

302
00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:34,280
Speaker 1: decision they made, the most important one to them, was

303
00:18:34,359 --> 00:18:41,200
Speaker 1: to not go a centralized mainframe organizational strategy. They wanted

304
00:18:41,200 --> 00:18:43,919
Speaker 1: to get away from mainframe computers. They saw that the

305
00:18:43,960 --> 00:18:48,800
Speaker 1: future was in desktops. But desktop machines, especially in ninety one,

306
00:18:49,520 --> 00:18:56,719
Speaker 1: were slow, they had relatively limited capabilities, so whatever system

307
00:18:56,760 --> 00:19:03,560
Speaker 1: they created had to be optimized for these less powerful machines.

308
00:19:04,560 --> 00:19:07,440
Speaker 1: They also wanted to make this system scalable, with options

309
00:19:07,440 --> 00:19:11,520
Speaker 1: to have various departments register servers with a top level server.

310
00:19:11,640 --> 00:19:14,960
Speaker 1: So in other words, you could have different departments having

311
00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:18,920
Speaker 1: their own networks, but have them linked to the main

312
00:19:19,480 --> 00:19:22,440
Speaker 1: network so that you can navigate throughout all of these

313
00:19:22,440 --> 00:19:24,520
Speaker 1: different systems, and that way, if you connected to that

314
00:19:24,600 --> 00:19:28,400
Speaker 1: top level server, you could navigate to any lower department

315
00:19:28,480 --> 00:19:31,320
Speaker 1: through a master menu. They also wanted the tool to

316
00:19:31,359 --> 00:19:33,520
Speaker 1: be efficient and lightweight, meaning they didn't want it to

317
00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:37,639
Speaker 1: tax those normal PCs and workstations. They didn't want a

318
00:19:37,680 --> 00:19:40,840
Speaker 1: tool that would move at a snail's pace, and that

319
00:19:41,720 --> 00:19:44,600
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons that they really focused on

320
00:19:44,840 --> 00:19:50,239
Speaker 1: text based communications, because it doesn't require a whole lot

321
00:19:50,240 --> 00:19:53,240
Speaker 1: of data to send text, and it meant that it

322
00:19:53,280 --> 00:19:58,000
Speaker 1: could be relatively fast and informative. They also decided that

323
00:19:58,040 --> 00:20:02,159
Speaker 1: the server would not retain states. Now that means that

324
00:20:02,200 --> 00:20:04,040
Speaker 1: the server wouldn't need to keep a record of all

325
00:20:04,040 --> 00:20:07,760
Speaker 1: the different information requests from multiple clients. Once a connection closed,

326
00:20:08,119 --> 00:20:11,199
Speaker 1: the state was white, and it would close the connection

327
00:20:11,240 --> 00:20:14,760
Speaker 1: after every transaction. Essentially, so together they worked on this

328
00:20:14,880 --> 00:20:19,360
Speaker 1: tool and they decided to call it Gopher. The name,

329
00:20:19,359 --> 00:20:22,240
Speaker 1: by the way, serves many purposes. For one, the mascot

330
00:20:22,359 --> 00:20:25,520
Speaker 1: of the University of Minnesota is the Golden Gopher, Minnesota

331
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:31,280
Speaker 1: is the Gopher state. Also, the idea of a metaphorical

332
00:20:31,320 --> 00:20:34,600
Speaker 1: gopher appealed to them. Gopher's tunnel and in a way,

333
00:20:35,160 --> 00:20:40,760
Speaker 1: the Gopher protocol kind of tunnels through networks. They also

334
00:20:40,880 --> 00:20:44,399
Speaker 1: started to refer to the networks that were using Gopher

335
00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:48,760
Speaker 1: as Gopher space. And finally, gophers also the term for

336
00:20:48,840 --> 00:20:52,200
Speaker 1: someone who runs errands and fetches things because the gopher

337
00:20:52,840 --> 00:20:59,879
Speaker 1: will gopher like coffee or you know, you can go

338
00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:03,439
Speaker 1: for snacks, that kind of stuff. The Classic Muppet Show

339
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:08,680
Speaker 1: series had Scooter who was a gopher. There were a

340
00:21:08,720 --> 00:21:11,439
Speaker 1: lot of jokes about that about how Scooter was a

341
00:21:11,480 --> 00:21:17,119
Speaker 1: gopher by job, but he wasn't a gopher by critter,

342
00:21:17,280 --> 00:21:22,000
Speaker 1: like he was not the actual animal gopher. Anyway, here's

343
00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:26,440
Speaker 1: the weird thing. So the team knew they were onto

344
00:21:26,480 --> 00:21:29,920
Speaker 1: something when they designed Gopher, but it didn't get a

345
00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:32,560
Speaker 1: lot of traction right out of the gate despite its utility,

346
00:21:32,600 --> 00:21:36,640
Speaker 1: because the University of Minnesota they just didn't see how

347
00:21:36,680 --> 00:21:39,080
Speaker 1: this would be useful. They didn't see the value in it,

348
00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:42,480
Speaker 1: so they didn't really put any support behind it, and

349
00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:45,359
Speaker 1: they didn't implement it at all. So the team decided

350
00:21:45,359 --> 00:21:48,399
Speaker 1: to sidestep all that red tape, and one of the

351
00:21:48,440 --> 00:21:53,199
Speaker 1: team members uploaded the software to an FTP server and

352
00:21:53,240 --> 00:21:56,520
Speaker 1: then posted a message on an Internet mailing list saying, hey, guys,

353
00:21:56,520 --> 00:21:59,399
Speaker 1: we developed this kind of cool tool. We think it

354
00:21:59,480 --> 00:22:01,960
Speaker 1: is a great way to organize information on networks and

355
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:05,159
Speaker 1: allow people to find stuff. Give it a try. So

356
00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:08,439
Speaker 1: people began to download it and put to use, and

357
00:22:08,520 --> 00:22:12,040
Speaker 1: not long after that it started to take off. A

358
00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:14,959
Speaker 1: lot of places were using it and they decided that

359
00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:17,159
Speaker 1: it made a whole lot of sense, and eventually the

360
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:21,640
Speaker 1: University of Minnesota administration relented and implemented Gopher as well

361
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:25,480
Speaker 1: on their campus. Now let's go ahead and talk about

362
00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:28,879
Speaker 1: Gopher implementations and what it was actually like. So there

363
00:22:28,880 --> 00:22:32,360
Speaker 1: were two main ways you could interact with Gopher. One

364
00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:35,480
Speaker 1: of them was to install software on your computer. And

365
00:22:36,400 --> 00:22:39,879
Speaker 1: this is looking at interacting with Gopher as a user

366
00:22:39,920 --> 00:22:43,280
Speaker 1: as opposed to as an administrator. So you want to

367
00:22:43,359 --> 00:22:45,840
Speaker 1: use Gopher, well, one thing you could do is install

368
00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:48,800
Speaker 1: software on your computer, and this was a client side

369
00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:52,520
Speaker 1: Gopher application, which really is not that different from a

370
00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:57,800
Speaker 1: web browser like Firefox or Chrome or Safari. It's essentially

371
00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:00,840
Speaker 1: a similar thing. It's a program that runs on your

372
00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:04,960
Speaker 1: computer that acts as the interface for this protocol. Those

373
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:07,840
Speaker 1: are all client side applications, just like the Gopher one was.

374
00:23:08,200 --> 00:23:10,119
Speaker 1: But you didn't have to do that. What you could

375
00:23:10,119 --> 00:23:15,960
Speaker 1: do instead is use a Telnet application. Telnet was another

376
00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:20,000
Speaker 1: old protocol that's still used in some places. Tel Net

377
00:23:20,040 --> 00:23:24,920
Speaker 1: would allow you to virtually log in to another terminal,

378
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 1: and you just had to have the correct address and

379
00:23:29,040 --> 00:23:31,520
Speaker 1: port number and everything in order to tell Net into

380
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:35,600
Speaker 1: that room. So you could use Telnet to log onto

381
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:38,919
Speaker 1: a remote server and use the server side Gopher client

382
00:23:39,040 --> 00:23:42,440
Speaker 1: to access directories. And in that case, all the work

383
00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:45,439
Speaker 1: is being done by the server and you don't have

384
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:49,360
Speaker 1: to actually have a client based application on your side.

385
00:23:50,040 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 1: The style of the Gopher client really dependent upon its implementation.

386
00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:57,359
Speaker 1: The team wanted to make sure that it was customizable,

387
00:23:57,960 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 1: but it was always simple. There's always text based. It

388
00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:05,480
Speaker 1: could be extremely simple where all you have are text

389
00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 1: options under a menu, or it could have some very

390
00:24:09,840 --> 00:24:15,080
Speaker 1: primitive kind of graphic user interface elements in it. Graphic

391
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:22,040
Speaker 1: user interface also known as GUY but less what's the

392
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:27,200
Speaker 1: right word, less impressive or extensive as what you would

393
00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:29,840
Speaker 1: find in the World Wide Web later. And there were

394
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 1: two worlds in the Gopher verse, the world the client

395
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 1: could see and the world the server worked with. So

396
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 1: on the server side, every item within a Gopher directory

397
00:24:41,960 --> 00:24:45,199
Speaker 1: would have certain elements to it, and that included a

398
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: client visible name, a selector which was usually something that

399
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:56,000
Speaker 1: used the path name that would connect the server for

400
00:24:56,119 --> 00:25:00,200
Speaker 1: location purposes. Then there would be a host name which

401
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 1: would tell the top level server which computer actually contained

402
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:08,720
Speaker 1: the file in question, and an IP port number. Ports

403
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:10,680
Speaker 1: are kind of like telephone lines, so a computer I

404
00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:13,040
Speaker 1: had to know which port it should use when contacting

405
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:16,640
Speaker 1: other computers. Now on the client side, on the user side,

406
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:20,239
Speaker 1: only those client visible names would show up. Everything else

407
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 1: would be hidden. And to use an analogy, imagine that

408
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 1: you go to a party and it's one of those

409
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:30,679
Speaker 1: super hip, geeky tech parties that I assume happened but

410
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:33,480
Speaker 1: I never get invited to anyway. Everyone gets a little

411
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:36,640
Speaker 1: name tag, and the name tag just has the person's

412
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:39,000
Speaker 1: name on it. That's it. That's the only information about

413
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:43,479
Speaker 1: the person that is visible to the average attendee. So

414
00:25:44,359 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 1: when you walk around the party, you can see each

415
00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:50,159
Speaker 1: person's name, but that's it. But let's say you're a

416
00:25:50,200 --> 00:25:53,720
Speaker 1: super duper awesome VIP at this party, and all the

417
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:56,679
Speaker 1: super duper awesome VIPs at this particular party get a

418
00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 1: little swag bag that has a pair of smart glasses

419
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:01,879
Speaker 1: in them, and if you put the smart glasses on,

420
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:06,959
Speaker 1: you see projected above the name tag of each person

421
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 1: more information, and it tells you where that person lives,

422
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:13,000
Speaker 1: what their phone number is, tells you about their favorite

423
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 1: lunch spots. In other words, you know a few different

424
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:19,440
Speaker 1: ways you could reach those people if you needed to. Well,

425
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:22,280
Speaker 1: in the gover verse, that sort of same approach was

426
00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:25,919
Speaker 1: applying but only to files, not to people, so there

427
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: wasn't anything creepy going on. But Mikail and his group

428
00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 1: decided that users didn't need to see all the extra information.

429
00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: They don't need to know where a file is on

430
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 1: a network. They don't care. They don't care if the

431
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:42,040
Speaker 1: file they want is on computer A or computer B.

432
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:46,400
Speaker 1: They just want access to that file. So they decided

433
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: that all of that excess information would be invisible to

434
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:52,120
Speaker 1: the user. It would still be there for the servers

435
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:55,560
Speaker 1: because the servers would need to know where everything was

436
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:58,320
Speaker 1: in or to direct users to the right location, But

437
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:01,920
Speaker 1: to the users themselves, they don't care, So get rid

438
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 1: of it, and ended up being a much more elegant

439
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 1: system that way. So let's say you've logged into a

440
00:27:09,040 --> 00:27:13,040
Speaker 1: college campus Gopher server because the tool was originally developed

441
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 1: for colleges. So what would you actually see if you

442
00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 1: did this, Well, you'd start off with a menu of options.

443
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:21,920
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a table of contents, and that

444
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 1: would allow you to explore different areas of the Gopher

445
00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 1: verse more thoroughly. A typical top level menu might include

446
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: and by the way, I'm taking this largely from a

447
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:35,639
Speaker 1: request for comments that Mikhail and his group created in

448
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: order to discuss what Gopher is, what it was meant for,

449
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:42,240
Speaker 1: and how it works. The first item might be something

450
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:45,480
Speaker 1: like about Internet Gopher, and it would literally just be

451
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 1: that little phrase, and if you selected that one, it

452
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 1: would open up something that would allow you to learn

453
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: more about Internet Gopher. It would pull the files that

454
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 1: could tell you about the version and Gopher in use

455
00:27:57,080 --> 00:27:59,880
Speaker 1: and how best to navigate it. It may even tell

456
00:27:59,880 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: you about the site administrator. And in fact, in that

457
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: original request for comments, they suggested that every administrator for

458
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 1: a Gopher server include his or her name, email address,

459
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: and phone number so that you could get in contact

460
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:20,920
Speaker 1: with them should something go wrong. Yikes. Obviously, this was

461
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:25,360
Speaker 1: in the days when very few people comparatively speaking, were

462
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 1: using an Internet tool. Because you could just imagine how

463
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:33,960
Speaker 1: much traffic you would get from various emails and phone numbers.

464
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 1: If you just put your actual address out on a

465
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: major website, that would be tough. The next element on

466
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:46,000
Speaker 1: this Gopher list might be something like around the campus,

467
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:49,800
Speaker 1: and that could include more directories that give you links

468
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 1: to files about various areas of campus. You might get

469
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:57,880
Speaker 1: some menus of different options. For example, at University of Georgia,

470
00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:00,800
Speaker 1: if I saw around the campus on a Gopher site

471
00:29:00,800 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: and I clicked on that, it might take me to

472
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 1: a couple of different sub menus, one for North campus

473
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:08,760
Speaker 1: and one for South campus, because the University of Georgia,

474
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:11,080
Speaker 1: at least at the time when I was attending it

475
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: was roughly divided into North and South campuses. Another option

476
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:19,800
Speaker 1: might say courses, schedules and calendars, which would obviously take

477
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 1: you to information about the classes offered by that college

478
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 1: and when they happen, as well as a list of

479
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: campus events throughout the year, and so on and so forth.

480
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: Those are just the kind of basic table of content

481
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: stuff you would see, and again it's all text based.

482
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: Typically the options on any list would have indicators to

483
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 1: let you know if you were looking at the name

484
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:40,480
Speaker 1: of a file or if you were looking at the

485
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: name of another directory. So again, in an example given

486
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 1: from that RFC paper that was written back in nineteen

487
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:51,720
Speaker 1: ninety three, the group showed directories as being followed by

488
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 1: an ellipses and files were not. So if it said

489
00:29:55,240 --> 00:29:59,000
Speaker 1: campus schedule with no ellipses, then you knew that clicking

490
00:29:59,080 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 1: on that would give you a file with the schedule

491
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:04,720
Speaker 1: on it if you chose that option. But if you

492
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: were looking at a list that said college activities dot

493
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: dot dot, you knew that the dot dot dot that

494
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 1: ellipses indicated that it was a link to another directory.

495
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: So if you clicked on college activities, you would get

496
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:22,400
Speaker 1: another menu that would subdivide up college activities. Maybe it

497
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: would be sports, after school activities, it might be extracurricular

498
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: student groups, that kind of thing. Now, Gopher's design allows

499
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:37,520
Speaker 1: other servers to interact with a top level server, so

500
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:39,960
Speaker 1: it didn't have to just be a single computer running

501
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 1: all of this information. In fact, that was beside the point.

502
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 1: The whole purpose of this was to allow multiple servers

503
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:51,240
Speaker 1: to connect with each other and create an overall strategy

504
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 1: for navigation to allow students or other users to learn

505
00:30:55,680 --> 00:30:58,959
Speaker 1: more information so you could have say the Computer Science

506
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:03,239
Speaker 1: department server registered under a top level option for the

507
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 1: entire university, and the English department could have its own server,

508
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: and the Math department could have its own server, and

509
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:12,840
Speaker 1: so on and so on. So each departmental server would

510
00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: further point down the chain to specific files relevant to

511
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:20,000
Speaker 1: that department. And Gopher also included the ability to stack,

512
00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 1: meaning that you could actually retrace your steps, which is

513
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 1: kind of like hitting the backbar or the back button

514
00:31:25,720 --> 00:31:28,760
Speaker 1: rather on a browser. So if you went down one

515
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:31,160
Speaker 1: path and then decided, hey, I need to see something

516
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:33,800
Speaker 1: else that was further back in my browsing, you could

517
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:36,800
Speaker 1: back up the pathway until you got to that specific

518
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: fork and then take the other fork. And that was

519
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: actually pretty innovative in the early nineties. It wasn't like

520
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 1: it was something that they were copying from other people.

521
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,720
Speaker 1: Unlike today's websites, the information on Gopher pages tended to

522
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: remain fairly static, which actually was also a huge help

523
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:56,640
Speaker 1: for Gopher space. You didn't have to update things quite

524
00:31:56,680 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: so frequently. Occasionally you might need to update a file,

525
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 1: or you might need to add a file to a server,

526
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: but that didn't happen at the frequency we see today

527
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: on the web, there weren't a lot of dynamic pages

528
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 1: out there. It was important for Gopher to be able

529
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:13,280
Speaker 1: to adapt to changes and evolving conditions, so the team

530
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 1: designed a system that it would allow them to update

531
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: files and path names and pieces so that you didn't

532
00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 1: have to do a full update of the whole system regularly.

533
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: You could just focus on whichever sections had new information

534
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: and just update those bits. Everything else could remain the same.

535
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:32,600
Speaker 1: That sped everything else up, Like if you are only

536
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:36,120
Speaker 1: making changes to two percent of your network, then there's

537
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: no reason to update all one hundred percent. They could

538
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:42,360
Speaker 1: save time by just updating that two percent. They also

539
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: made another very clever choice. They recommended that all top

540
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: level servers have a clone and that way, if one

541
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 1: server were to fail for whatever reason, another one could

542
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 1: take over the job. Also, if you had a really

543
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: busy network, you could have both servers acting at the

544
00:32:58,400 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 1: same time, sharing the loads. So some users are using

545
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 1: server A, some users are using server B, but both

546
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:08,400
Speaker 1: of them are identical. They have complete navigational tools to

547
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:11,760
Speaker 1: go through the whole network, and so it doesn't really

548
00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 1: matter which one you land on as a user, it's

549
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:16,720
Speaker 1: going to be the same experience, and since most of

550
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:19,720
Speaker 1: the files remain static, you didn't really have to worry

551
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:22,840
Speaker 1: about the two top level servers getting out of sync.

552
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: They would be pretty much ready to go all the time.

553
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:28,960
Speaker 1: I mean, occasionally you'd have to update at least parts

554
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: of the system, but it was pretty manageable, especially in

555
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 1: those early days before things got super complicated now. The

556
00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 1: team also suggested that all registered servers in a system

557
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:43,040
Speaker 1: have an alias that the Gopher client could use to

558
00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: locate those servers, and this way the client would know

559
00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: each registered server by its alias, rather than the server's

560
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:54,640
Speaker 1: primary name, which was more or less unchangeable. Now why

561
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 1: would you want to have an alias, Well, the reason

562
00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 1: was to improve portability. So if as an administrator, you

563
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 1: decided that you needed to move files from one server

564
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:07,880
Speaker 1: to another server, that could be a huge headache because

565
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: it would mean having to update all these different path

566
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:15,439
Speaker 1: names so that your top level machine knows where everything is. Now, right,

567
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:19,040
Speaker 1: if you had to say, oh, well, instead of being

568
00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: on this machine, it needs to be on this machine.

569
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:23,279
Speaker 1: I've got to update all these different files and these

570
00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:26,399
Speaker 1: different path names so that people navigating the system will

571
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 1: get to where they need to go using the alias

572
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 1: was actually a very clever idea to get around this.

573
00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:34,319
Speaker 1: Clients wouldn't require an update or any alteration. They don't

574
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:36,759
Speaker 1: need to know that computer one, which used to be

575
00:34:36,840 --> 00:34:39,920
Speaker 1: known as Bob, has gone offline and now computer two

576
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:43,399
Speaker 1: has all of computer one's stuff. Instead, the administrator would

577
00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: just name computer two Bob. They would give computer two

578
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 1: the alias of the old computer one, and then the

579
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:53,760
Speaker 1: clients would just end up going to computer two because

580
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 1: they're not looking at one or two, They're just looking

581
00:34:56,120 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 1: for Bob, and if computer two is Bob, now that's

582
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:01,919
Speaker 1: where they go. It was an ELI solution, particularly once

583
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: network's got really complex. Now, the brilliant thing behind Gopher

584
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:08,320
Speaker 1: is that the end user didn't need to know any

585
00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:12,240
Speaker 1: of this. That didn't matter to them. They just needed

586
00:35:12,239 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 1: to have a simple interface to interact with. They needed

587
00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 1: to be able to see the choices they wanted to

588
00:35:18,080 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 1: make a choice and follow that pathway, and it was

589
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 1: very similar to kind of a choose your own adventure book.

590
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 1: As long as the directories were clear and organization of

591
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:29,799
Speaker 1: the information made sense, it was easy to use. And

592
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 1: then there was the killer app, the ability to search.

593
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 1: So to search on Gopher, you had to set up

594
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:42,680
Speaker 1: an actual Gopher search server, it would be its own

595
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:47,799
Speaker 1: purpose was to essentially have all the different files that

596
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:52,879
Speaker 1: are connected to that particular Gopher space indexed, and these

597
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:56,240
Speaker 1: servers could perform full text searches in all the files

598
00:35:56,280 --> 00:36:00,319
Speaker 1: on all the registered servers in that Gopher space. So,

599
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:04,319
Speaker 1: by default, search queries assumed that if you were to

600
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:08,320
Speaker 1: type in multiple words, the spaces between those words were

601
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 1: an and in boolean logic. In other words, if you

602
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:16,640
Speaker 1: typed in Spanish dance in the query field, so you

603
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:20,800
Speaker 1: just have Spanish space dance, the search would actually assume

604
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:23,840
Speaker 1: what you are saying is give me all the files

605
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:28,800
Speaker 1: that have both the words Spanish and dance in them.

606
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 1: Files that didn't meet that criteria would not be returned.

607
00:36:32,280 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: So if there was a file that had the words

608
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 1: Spanish in it, but dance never appeared in that file,

609
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:38,680
Speaker 1: you wouldn't get it. Same thing if it were dance

610
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: but Spanish was never there, you wouldn't get it. Now,

611
00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 1: this structure only worked with servers that were registered to

612
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:47,920
Speaker 1: the same system, So these Gopher spaces were kind of

613
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:52,280
Speaker 1: like islands in the ocean. You could connect Gopher spaces together,

614
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 1: you could end up registering the servers of different Gopher

615
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:59,520
Speaker 1: spaces so that they made larger networks, and that would

616
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:02,840
Speaker 1: allow users to navigate from one system of servers to another.

617
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:06,120
Speaker 1: But that wasn't necessarily the aim of Gopher. So if

618
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: I did a search on a Gopher space for a

619
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 1: specific term, like again at UGA, if UGA was its

620
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: own contained system, its own network of servers throughout the campus,

621
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:22,680
Speaker 1: but none of those had connections to other campuses, I'm

622
00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 1: not going to find files that are stored at the

623
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:29,840
Speaker 1: University of Minnesota because the two systems are distinct. I'll

624
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:33,480
Speaker 1: only find files that are on UGA system. So it

625
00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:35,279
Speaker 1: was a little different from the World Wide Web. It

626
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 1: had these again, these kind of islands of information. Well,

627
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 1: I've got some more to talk about, including the rise

628
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: and fall of Gopher itself, but before I get into

629
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:49,719
Speaker 1: that section, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.

630
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,520
Speaker 1: All Right, we're talking about the nineteen nineties. Now, the

631
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:07,879
Speaker 1: Internet was still pretty darn young back then, especially an

632
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:12,200
Speaker 1: Internet that was accessible to people beyond the computer science field,

633
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,240
Speaker 1: and no one was really sure what it would evolve

634
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 1: into in those early nineties. In nineteen ninety two, the

635
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:23,239
Speaker 1: Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF held a meeting in

636
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:27,600
Speaker 1: San Diego, and they invited McHale and also Anklesaria to

637
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: come out and to speak to the group as a

638
00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: whole about the work they were doing with Gopher now.

639
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:37,880
Speaker 1: The meeting included a whole bunch of different important figures

640
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:41,480
Speaker 1: in Internet history, including Tim berners Lee, who is the

641
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:43,840
Speaker 1: guy who pioneered the World Wide Web. He built the

642
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 1: first web page at CERN, that's the same organization that

643
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: runs the Large Hadron Collider. So berners Lee was there

644
00:38:50,600 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: to talk about his approach to Internet navigation using what

645
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 1: he called the web and hypertext, which I'm sure you're

646
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 1: familiar with because that's what everybody uses today. He also

647
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 1: was very interested in trying to find a way for

648
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: the Web and Gopher to work together. The folks over

649
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:10,840
Speaker 1: at Gopher they were looking at berners lee approach to

650
00:39:11,360 --> 00:39:13,479
Speaker 1: navigation and they said, well, this doesn't make any sense

651
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:18,440
Speaker 1: using hypertext of different words to leap to connected but

652
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 1: distinct ideas. That makes an organization impossible. It's like the

653
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: opposite of what we're doing. We're trying to create hierarchies

654
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 1: of information, and the web is a web. It's all

655
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:32,719
Speaker 1: this interconnectivity. So they never really got to work things

656
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: out with berners Lee, something that they said in retrospect

657
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:38,920
Speaker 1: perhaps was a mistake, but they didn't know that at

658
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:41,360
Speaker 1: the time. No one was short at the time whose

659
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 1: approach was going to work out best. So it was

660
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 1: as a weird experience, right. And besides, the web programmers

661
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:53,520
Speaker 1: learned about other means of accessing and navigating the Internet.

662
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:57,200
Speaker 1: There were other ones like a Prospero and waste or

663
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:02,200
Speaker 1: wais so be. Clifford Noyman and was the pioneer behind Prospero,

664
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:06,240
Speaker 1: which was meant to create personalized directories of the Internet

665
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:09,760
Speaker 1: in response to user queries, so he could organize information

666
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:12,879
Speaker 1: and allow users to search grouping resources together so that

667
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:15,760
Speaker 1: users didn't have to go down several different individual paths

668
00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:18,800
Speaker 1: and just hope for the best. Ways stood for Wide

669
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:23,719
Speaker 1: Area Information Server. It was a text searching system that

670
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 1: could look for specific strings of text on files on

671
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:30,520
Speaker 1: a server, retrieving any hits that it might find. And

672
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 1: so it was also very different from the Gopher approach

673
00:40:35,120 --> 00:40:38,600
Speaker 1: or the Prospero approach. It was a pretty basic strategy

674
00:40:38,719 --> 00:40:43,880
Speaker 1: to search and retrieval. So at this gathering, Mikhail discovered

675
00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:47,359
Speaker 1: that people already knew a lot about Gopher. He thought

676
00:40:47,360 --> 00:40:49,239
Speaker 1: he was going out there to tell people about a

677
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 1: system that he had developed and kind of launched the

678
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: year before. But everyone there seemed to really be familiar

679
00:40:54,120 --> 00:40:56,239
Speaker 1: with it. A lot of them were running their own

680
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:59,719
Speaker 1: Gopher servers. They were really curious to hear more about

681
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:03,680
Speaker 1: the team behind Gopher. The software had spread rapidly because

682
00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 1: of its easy implementation and interface, and adoption was incredible.

683
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:13,960
Speaker 1: By nineteen ninety three, Gopher's traffic growth rate hit nine

684
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:19,279
Speaker 1: hundred ninety seven percent. Now that definitely sounds astronomical, but

685
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:22,920
Speaker 1: keep in mind percentages are tricksy. For example, if I

686
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:25,960
Speaker 1: sold one newspaper in a week, and then the following

687
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:29,400
Speaker 1: week I sold ten newspapers, I'd have a growth sales

688
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:33,719
Speaker 1: rate of nine hundred percent. So while nine hundred ninety

689
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:38,440
Speaker 1: seven percent growth is spectacular, we're not talking about enormous numbers.

690
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: By April nineteen ninety four, the number of Gopher servers,

691
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:43,880
Speaker 1: or at least the ones that the team was aware of,

692
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:49,279
Speaker 1: had hit just under seven thousand servers. But Gopher did

693
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:51,879
Speaker 1: have a big head start on the web. It took

694
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:55,000
Speaker 1: the web a bit longer to catch on because you

695
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 1: had to have the development of the clients that people

696
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:01,239
Speaker 1: could use to browse the web, and you had to

697
00:42:01,320 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 1: have the development of the actual software people were using

698
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:09,759
Speaker 1: to create web servers. Gopher was popular enough for the

699
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 1: team to start to hold conferences of their own called

700
00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:16,360
Speaker 1: Gopher cons. They even created t shirts and merchandise with

701
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 1: the Gopher logo on it. Colleges and companies were adopting it.

702
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:22,320
Speaker 1: Even the White House launched a Gopher site back in

703
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 1: those days. But hot on the heels of Gopher was

704
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:29,120
Speaker 1: the Worldwide Web concept, which had its own compelling methods

705
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:33,399
Speaker 1: of navigating and presenting information. Even though it seemed non

706
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 1: intuitive to the Gopher group, it turned out that people

707
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:38,479
Speaker 1: really like it. Anyone who spent a lot of time

708
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 1: on a site like Wikipedia dancing from one topic to another,

709
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 1: just diving down those rabbit holes, they know what I'm

710
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:49,719
Speaker 1: talking about. Someone, ironically, I would say Tim berners Lee

711
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:52,360
Speaker 1: actually was able to spread the word about the World

712
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 1: Wide Web using a Gopher site. That's how people were

713
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:57,879
Speaker 1: able to get the files they needed to create web

714
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:01,280
Speaker 1: servers and web clients, as well as find more information

715
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:04,240
Speaker 1: about the web itself. And the Gover team was running

716
00:43:04,280 --> 00:43:06,600
Speaker 1: into problems with the University of Minnesota as well. The

717
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:12,840
Speaker 1: administration was always something of a reluctant partner with this group.

718
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 1: At first, the college had been a roadblock. You remember

719
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: I mentioned they refused to implement Gopher in those early days.

720
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:22,320
Speaker 1: They only did it after it had already been implemented

721
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: at other college campuses. Members of the gover development team

722
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,960
Speaker 1: were looking at the possibility of creating a private entity,

723
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:32,320
Speaker 1: like a spinoff company, to create Gopher as a commercial product.

724
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: But back in those days, the Internet was still largely

725
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 1: the domain of universities and government offices. In fact, a

726
00:43:39,080 --> 00:43:42,000
Speaker 1: lot of people looked at the possibility of private enterprise

727
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:45,280
Speaker 1: getting involved with the Internet as something they did not want.

728
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 1: A lot of people kind of compared it to public broadcasting.

729
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 1: They said the Internet should remain like PBS and all

730
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:55,759
Speaker 1: these companies. That's like ads supported TV. We don't want

731
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:58,759
Speaker 1: that here. So there was a lot of resistance even

732
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:01,720
Speaker 1: among the group themselves. It's not everybody was in agreement

733
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: that they should go the privatizer route. And remember the

734
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 1: dot com era had not yet begun at this point. Then.

735
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:12,440
Speaker 1: The University of Minnesota instituted a licensing policy for Gopher.

736
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:16,000
Speaker 1: They said that any organization out there that was operating

737
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 1: for profit would need to pay a license fee to

738
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:23,919
Speaker 1: the University of Minnesota in order to use Gopher, and

739
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 1: the cost of this license fee was sliding. It depended

740
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:31,799
Speaker 1: upon the size and type of business in question, and

741
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:34,240
Speaker 1: the university was looking to keep all that money for themselves,

742
00:44:34,239 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: really i Meanwhile, the development team found that the university

743
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 1: still wanted them to do their regular desk jobs as

744
00:44:39,600 --> 00:44:43,800
Speaker 1: programmers for the University of Minnesota, so they were supposed

745
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 1: to both develop Gopher and work on their normal jobs,

746
00:44:47,480 --> 00:44:50,359
Speaker 1: and they weren't really given any more resources to do this.

747
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: It was still just the six of them, so their

748
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:57,480
Speaker 1: morale began to decline. And then they had the university

749
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:00,399
Speaker 1: expecting them to do these two jobs at once, as

750
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: well as having an entire population of users out there

751
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: who were angry about this licensing policy that the university

752
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:09,480
Speaker 1: has had put in place, and the team was kind

753
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:12,120
Speaker 1: of caught in the middle, and at one point, the

754
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 1: university even considered outsourcing Gopher to other programmers, essentially taking

755
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:20,360
Speaker 1: it away from the team that created it and giving

756
00:45:20,360 --> 00:45:24,600
Speaker 1: it to someone else. Meanwhile, the web was just getting started.

757
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:27,800
Speaker 1: Remember that I said, Gopher grew by nine hundred ninety

758
00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:31,840
Speaker 1: seven percent back in nineteen ninety three. Well, the web

759
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 1: also grew that year by three hundred forty one thousand,

760
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:40,799
Speaker 1: six hundred thirty four percent. I was also the first

761
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:45,160
Speaker 1: year of the commercial web browser, Mosaic. Mosaic proved that

762
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:48,400
Speaker 1: you could go commercial on the Internet. So while the

763
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:52,600
Speaker 1: Gopher group was reluctant the website, things were going in

764
00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:56,000
Speaker 1: a very different direction, and the web was incorporating stuff

765
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 1: that Gopher couldn't really support, like images on web pages. Now,

766
00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 1: as an image on a web page was not a

767
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:06,280
Speaker 1: huge asset because it took forever to render a picture

768
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:09,400
Speaker 1: on a screen, and it caused some people to say

769
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:14,720
Speaker 1: that WWW actually stood for worldwide Weight. But modem speeds

770
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:16,840
Speaker 1: were on the rise as well, and that helped reduce

771
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 1: some of that loading time, And some of the Gopher

772
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:24,319
Speaker 1: team rather sardonically said, we knew the game was up

773
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:28,040
Speaker 1: when we realized that people could get naked photos on

774
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 1: their computer screens using the World Wide Web, something that

775
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:33,480
Speaker 1: you could not be done with Gopher, and they were

776
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:36,640
Speaker 1: being pretty serious about it at the time. By the

777
00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 1: spring of nineteen ninety four, web traffic exceeded Gopher traffic.

778
00:46:41,719 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 1: So even though Gopher had a headstart, Web had caught

779
00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 1: up and passed Gopher traffic. Companies were discovering that there

780
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:53,240
Speaker 1: were some possibilities on the web, though really web commerce

781
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:55,959
Speaker 1: was still a couple of years away from really taking off,

782
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,520
Speaker 1: but it offered opportunities beyond just sharing information, which was

783
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 1: really the only thing Gopher was good for was really

784
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 1: sharing information and distributing files. It wasn't meant to do

785
00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:10,279
Speaker 1: really more than that. So the web had versatility on

786
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:13,120
Speaker 1: its side as well. And one of the big things

787
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:16,480
Speaker 1: that helped drive the knife home and Gopher had nothing

788
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:19,879
Speaker 1: to do with how people use the Internet. It had

789
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: to do with a scandal unrelated to anyone on the

790
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:27,920
Speaker 1: Gopher team. Doctor John Nigerian, a transplant surgeon at the

791
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: University of Minnesota, was accused of fraud, tax evasion, and embezzlement.

792
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 1: The charges led the National Institutes of Health, which is

793
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:39,840
Speaker 1: a federal government office here in the United States, to

794
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:43,400
Speaker 1: withdraw funding to the university, and that was a serious

795
00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:46,720
Speaker 1: blow to the school, so they went to emergency mode

796
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:50,480
Speaker 1: to try and fix the situation. They, as part of that,

797
00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:54,200
Speaker 1: asked the Gopher team to create a new system to

798
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:58,279
Speaker 1: track accounts and file paperwork, because a large part of

799
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:03,240
Speaker 1: this accusation really dealt with the way paperwork was failing

800
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:07,760
Speaker 1: to be filed on time. So the team eventually developed

801
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:11,040
Speaker 1: a web based transaction program, which is also kind of

802
00:48:11,040 --> 00:48:12,680
Speaker 1: ironic when you think about it. That was a web

803
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 1: based approach. It was the world's first web based transaction program.

804
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:19,480
Speaker 1: But it also meant that while they were developing this,

805
00:48:19,640 --> 00:48:22,799
Speaker 1: they could not continue working on Gopher because they just

806
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 1: didn't have the time to do it. So by the

807
00:48:25,160 --> 00:48:29,359
Speaker 1: time they finished the web based application, Gopher was dead

808
00:48:29,400 --> 00:48:32,760
Speaker 1: in the water, or I guess dead under the ground,

809
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:35,800
Speaker 1: I suppose, if we want to stick with the metaphor anyway,

810
00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:39,600
Speaker 1: It's not really dead dead. It's not entirely gone. There

811
00:48:39,640 --> 00:48:42,960
Speaker 1: are still Gopher servers out there if you know where

812
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:47,240
Speaker 1: to look. But as an evolving entity, Gopher was essentially

813
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:50,879
Speaker 1: a thing of the past, and at some point ten

814
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: no one's really sure when someone took the original Gopher

815
00:48:54,760 --> 00:48:59,320
Speaker 1: server known as Mother Gopher, offline. The University of Minnesota

816
00:48:59,360 --> 00:49:02,120
Speaker 1: supported it for several years after Gopher had clearly lost

817
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:04,320
Speaker 1: the race to the web, but that is no longer

818
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:07,279
Speaker 1: the case, as for Michael. He would go on to

819
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:10,799
Speaker 1: join Duke University, where he still works today, and other

820
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:12,960
Speaker 1: members of the team have gone on to do other things.

821
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 1: Some of them retired, some of them album's working for Google.

822
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 1: One of them stayed with the University of Minnesota, oh

823
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:23,400
Speaker 1: And doctor Nigerian, who was accused of those crimes, was

824
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:27,680
Speaker 1: ultimately exonerated of those accusations of fraud and embezzlement. The

825
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:31,480
Speaker 1: jury returned with a verdict of not guilty, but by

826
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:33,920
Speaker 1: then the damage was done in more ways than one.

827
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: Gopher had faded away due to lack of support, and

828
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:39,800
Speaker 1: the university found itself struggling to regain the trust of

829
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:44,480
Speaker 1: the nih And that was the Textuff Classics episode What

830
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 1: Was Gopher, which originally published April nineteenth, twenty seventeen. I

831
00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that episode. For the older listeners out there,

832
00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:55,319
Speaker 1: let me know if you used Gopher. I mean, some

833
00:49:55,400 --> 00:49:57,799
Speaker 1: of the younger ones may have too. It's just less likely,

834
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: I think, but yeah, let me know if you is

835
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,560
Speaker 1: Gopher and your thoughts on it. I would love to

836
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 1: hear from you, and I hope you are all well

837
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:15,920
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon. Tech

838
00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:20,400
Speaker 1: Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

839
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:24,440
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

840
00:50:24,480 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.