Gopher (Protocol) Turns 35, Gemini is 28 Years Younger
In the middle of 1991, i.e. 35 years ago, the Gopher system (or protocol) was released by Mark P. McCahill, Farhad Anklesaria, Paul Lindner, Daniel Torrey, and Bob Alberti of the University of Minnesota (source: Wikipedia). Gemini (protocol) has only just turned 7.
Gopher is still around, some people use it to publish today (e.g. about Gopher itself), and there's no signs of it going away.
On the Internet, many people still mess around with BBS, USENET (NNTP), and all sorts of other things. IRC will turn 38 in less than 2 months from now.
Bad technology comes and goes very fast (lots of examples come to mind), simpler technology generally lasts longer partly because the maintenance overhead is low. Sites that use WordPress, for example, will probably have to "upgrade" WordPress over 100 times in 20 years, with some so-called 'upgrades' breaking existing functionality, causing headaches (technical debt).
WordPress sees its popularity waning because it adopted the mindset of bloat. Like with Microsoft Office, more people out there realise they no longer need WordPress and never use the vast majority of its functionality. █
Image source: Number of Gopher servers from 2012 to 2022
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