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Overbite Project: Why still use Gopher? What makes Gopher relevant?

However, there is much to be gained from a heterogeneous network environment where there are multiple methods of information access, and while the Web will confidently remain the primary means of Internet information dissemination, there continues to be a role for Gopher-based resources even in this modern age. Gopher and the Web can, and should, continue to coexist.

On the Web, even if such a group of confederated webmasters existed, it requires their active and willful participation to maintain such a hierarchical style and the seamlessness of that joint interface breaks down abruptly as soon as one leaves for another page. Just like it had been envisioned by its creators, Gopher takes the strict hierarchical nature of a file tree or FTP and turns it into a friendlier format that still gives the fast and predictable responses that they would get by simply browsing their hard drive. Indeed, this sort of network doublethink has wrought large, unwieldy solutions such as WAP, a dramatic irony, since in the case of many low-power devices such as consumer mobile phones, the menu format used on them is nearly completely analogous to what Gopher already offered over a decade earlier.

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