互联网鼻祖缘何陨落│科技史

作为万维网（WWW）崛起以前短暂称霸网络的互联网协议，Gopher以一系列可浏览的文件夹组织内容。超链接、书签、甚至“上网冲浪”都是Gopher时代的产物。

Gopher的开发始于1991年，开发者为马克·麦卡希尔为首的明尼苏达大学双子城分校研究团队。和承载着未来梦想的一些保密互联网项目不同，Gopher是无心插柳之作。研究团队当时的主要工作是满足大学里海量的计算需求，还要接听电话提供技术支持。而且有时还要顶着上级施加的压力。

麦卡希尔向《明尼阿波利斯邮报》表示，开发Gopher的宗旨是“让普通人都能方便操作电脑。”可由于当年明尼苏达大学的高层还固守主机服务器模型，Gopher去中心化的模型被视为离经叛道。在一场激烈争执的会议之后，高层要求研究团队终止Gopher项目。

研究者顶住压力坚持开发，推出了一系列36小时的编码会话，于1991年4月正式发布Gopher。首台配置Gopher的服务器设在一部苹果个人电脑Mac SE/30上。

Gopher的模式从此一炮走红。在几百台Gopher服务器涌现后，时任美国副总统戈尔接见了研究团队。Gopher的年度大会还吸引了世界银行和微软等知名机构参加。

可惜好景不长。Gopher诞生初期的困难之一就是筹集继续开发的资金，研究者希望收取授权费用，却引起用户反感。而且，万维网迅速迎头赶上。随着调制解调器运行速度越来越快，浏览器也愈发先进，万维网比基于文本的Gopher吸引力更大。到1994年春季，万维网的流量已经超越Gopher。1995年，麦卡希尔的团队转而投入明尼苏达大学一个紧急项目，Gopher就此走向没落。

不过，一些安装了Gopher的服务器至今仍在使用。一些用户认为这些服务器很有魅力，因为Gopher不支持广告，也无法追踪用户的浏览习惯。日薄西山的Gopher没准真有机会东山再起。（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审校：夏林

It was Gopher, which organized content as a series of browsable folders, that introduced hyperlinks, bookmarking, and even the term “surf the internet.”

Gopher was developed starting in 1991 by a team at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, led by Mark McCahill. This was not some Internet Skunk Works tasked with dreaming about the future—the same team handled a huge swath of the University’s computing needs, including answering support calls. Gopher was largely developed in their off time—and often, against resistance from higher-ups.

McCahill tells the Post that the ethos behind Gopher was “putting computers in the hands of everyday people.” But the powers-that-be at the University of Minnesota were still defending the mainframe server model, and Gopher’s decentralized model was an affront to that. After a contentious meeting, the team was told to stop work on the project.

They kept working anyway, putting in a series of 36-hour coding sessions. Gopher was released in April of 1991, and the first server was set up on a Mac SE/30 PC.

The format took off. Hundreds of Gopher servers popped up, Al Gore visited the team, and an annual conference attracted heavy hitters like the World Bank and Microsoft.

But it didn’t last. One of the early hurdles was an attempt to fund further development through licensing fees, which users took as an affront. And the Web quickly caught up, as faster modem speeds and better browsers made it more appealing than the text-based Gopher. Web traffic was greater than Gopher traffic by the Spring of 1994. McCahill’s team was diverted to an emergency university project in 1995, effectively killing Gopher for good.

But there are still Gopher servers out there, and for some users, they have a major appeal—the protocol isn’t ad-friendly, and can’t track your browsing habits. That could make the venerable format ripe for a resurgence.