The other day I was browsing some random Micro.blog blogs when I came across an interesting post about Gemini in the Hey Loura! blog. Gemini in this case does not refer to Google’s AI service but an application layer internet protocol developed quite recently, in 2019.

Gemini is kind of like HTTP but very, very simple. Gemini’s preferred document format is gemtext, which is almost a subset of Markdown: you get headers and lists (but no nested lists) and hyperlinks (that need to be on their own line). You also get quotes and preformatted text for presenting code, but that’s it. It does not support, for example, styles or inline images.

No normal browser supports Gemini. The “Geminispace” can, however, be accessed by a number of custom browsers that can use the gemini:// protocol. Anyone can host a Gemini “capsule” by themself, or use one of the free or paid services to do that.

Somehow I find the idea behind Gemini quite appealing: no ads; no big companies trying to hook you or exploit you; no competing for likes or subscriptions; quick loading times; pages where the content speaks for itself. Even the mobile versions of many web sites are rather heavy these days, which can be observed if you’ve ever tried to use the internet while traveling in a plane, but Gemini pages promise to be even more light-weight.

Learn more from the project’s web site at GeminiProtocol.net or from Wikipedia.