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Gemini is Solutionism

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Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#61

Post by tlamponi »

ryukafalz wrote: post #51

I don't often use Gemini, but here's the thing that I think this misses and that Gemini does well: If I click a link in a Gemini browser, I know for sure that it will not start loading and running a ton of resource-intensive scripts. I know that it will not start autoplaying audio or video. I know that it will display fine in plain text, every single time - so it works in my terminal, in Emacs, on my phone, etc. And…

> If I click a link in a Gemini browser, I know for sure that it will not start loading and running a ton of resource-intensive scripts. I know that it will not start autoplaying audio or video. I know that it will display fine in plain text, every single time - so it works in my terminal, in Emacs, on my phone, etc. And I know it will be fast.

With a `text/gemini` content type over HTTP/1.1 you could just use cURL, wget or fancier stuff like w3m/lynx and get the exact same benefits but would not need to install yet another internet facing tool that may even get things wrong security wise (even with simple stuff a possibility).

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#63

Post by agumonkey »

duxup wrote: post #58
square_usual wrote: post #50

I agree with the author, but from a different direction. The Gemini community has this ethos that stripping away all the styling etc. makes the internet about "content" again. Setting aside for the moment that the definition that content = text is unnecessarily reductive (and insulting to other forms of content - is a beautiful animation not content? is an interactive map of a country showing how covid is affecting i…

The great thing about the web when I came along with was all the character, good, bad or otherwise that personal sites, even some corporate sites that people build had. GeoCities came along and things could be ugly, but it felt genuine. Even just background choices or ugly gifs… I miss the personal wonkiness and folks not afraid to make ugly sites. The race to ultra minimalism feels as cold as a Facebook profile, may…

It's a recurrent pattern. Cars used to be more diverse. Ecosystems tend to converge

I do miss these days too.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#64

Post by knowledge-clay »

square_usual wrote: post #50

I agree with the author, but from a different direction. The Gemini community has this ethos that stripping away all the styling etc. makes the internet about "content" again. Setting aside for the moment that the definition that content = text is unnecessarily reductive (and insulting to other forms of content - is a beautiful animation not content? is an interactive map of a country showing how covid is affecting i…

> people who care deeply about content are doing everything except bikeshedding about internet protocols.

> Gemini is a protocol for techies who want to bikeshed about tech!

I don't agree with this on the matter of fact -- the spec has not meaningfully changed in at least a year, no major companion specs have been added since "gemlog", and the mailing list is currently down. While I may have agreed with you in late 2020, The only thing being produced on Gemini now is "content", and there's more of it than ever!

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#65

Post by r3ndr »

Gemini's most distinguishing feature seems to be that it is considered feature complete. If everything goes as planned, even decades from now building a usable gemini client should be easily doable. Completely unlike web browsers which started off with fairly simple html but picked up a lot of bloat over the last few decades. This alone might make Gemini worth it.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#66

Post by readthenotes1 »

akkartik wrote: post #23

I'm not yet sure how I feel about Gemini (I like inline links), but this post makes me think it's starting to gain some traction. It's past the "first they ignore it" and "then they laugh at it" phases and now into the "then they fight it" phase. Given that the mainstream stack we all are dependent on has foundational problems as OP acknowledges, language like "solutionism at its worst" feels counter-productive. Sure…

You're saying Gemini is the Judean People's Front? A difference without a distinction?

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#67

Post by akkartik »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #66
akkartik wrote: post #23

I'm not yet sure how I feel about Gemini (I like inline links), but this post makes me think it's starting to gain some traction. It's past the "first they ignore it" and "then they laugh at it" phases and now into the "then they fight it" phase. Given that the mainstream stack we all are dependent on has foundational problems as OP acknowledges, language like "solutionism at its worst" feels counter-productive. Sure…

You're saying Gemini is the Judean People's Front? A difference without a distinction?

If you think the web sucks, stop equating people (not companies) building alternatives with Google and Facebook. I think OP is the Judean People's Front while Gemini is the People's Front of Judea. Or something. Who cares?

Here's an example of the connotations the term "solutionism" has: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/09/evgeny-mo.... It does not apply here, to put it mildly.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#68

Post by hayley-patton »

knowledge-clay wrote: post #18

> It feels like the people working on/running Gemini infrastructure don’t want to actually solve the issues with the modern day web and instead just wanted to be different, Many of Gemini's adherents can be described broadly as left-anarchists or left-libertarians. Their assessment of the problem is that the web has been captured by large, centralized corporations. Their alternative is human-scale technology and huma…

> Many of Gemini's adherents can be described broadly as left-anarchists or left-libertarians. [...] Their alternative is human-scale technology and human-scale communities: a protocol so brain-dead simple [...]. It's a philosophy that users should have a close relationship with and understanding of the tools and platforms they use, which should be built and run for free (one can think of many real-world organizations analogous to this). [...] Could you build these tools and communities on HTTP? Sure [...] but it's a more radical separation to build an entirely separate "place" for them.

I used to consider myself a left-anarchist, though now I might better be considered a post-left anarchist nowadays. More radical, perhaps in PLA style, is to do away with this silly idea of "human scale"; we have computers, so let's do some computing, and get something interactive like the Web, but from an axiomatic design that is implementable in your lifespan, and ensures privacy and security properties from such axioms.

https://applied-langua.ge/posts/terminal-boredom.html is a longer form writeup on this line of thought.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#69

Post by Barrin92 »

knowledge-clay wrote: post #18

> It feels like the people working on/running Gemini infrastructure don’t want to actually solve the issues with the modern day web and instead just wanted to be different, Many of Gemini's adherents can be described broadly as left-anarchists or left-libertarians. Their assessment of the problem is that the web has been captured by large, centralized corporations. Their alternative is human-scale technology and huma…

>This is a bizarre analogy, because, unlike the other alternatives that the author presents (e.g. blockchain), there is no money or corporate interest in Gemini. But I do agree that Gemini is, to some degree, escapism, it does not confront the institutional problems of the web.

I don't think the analogy is super bizarre. The Left-anarchist milieu, building its own separate spaces, unschooling their kids, living in their Californian suburb and going to Burning Man has always been more thoroughly bourgeois than even the worst cutthroat entrepreneur.

I can imagine a 40 year old retired tech guy living off his stocks raising his own chickens, self-declared left-libertarian socialist going "Oh, you use HTTP? That's nice. Corporate? I'm beyond it. I blog on Gemini". At least big corporate makes stuff ordinary people can actually use.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#70

Post by syntheticnature »

akkartik wrote: post #23

I'm not yet sure how I feel about Gemini (I like inline links), but this post makes me think it's starting to gain some traction. It's past the "first they ignore it" and "then they laugh at it" phases and now into the "then they fight it" phase. Given that the mainstream stack we all are dependent on has foundational problems as OP acknowledges, language like "solutionism at its worst" feels counter-productive. Sure…

I guess it depends on how big of a "they" is required -- and if this is an attack, not harsh laughter.

That said, I think Gemini is intentionally designed to be ignored; an enclave or ghetto on the Internet, depending which connotations the speaker wants to have. Its success or failure will depend on its ability to have a self-sustaining community, which is interesting mainly in that discovering Gemini requires finding it via the web at the moment. I suppose there might be a Gemini-IRC connection, too; we will see if Gemini has IRC's longevity.

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