Dead Parrot BBS

If you hear the word Gemini now, you probably think of Google’s AI product. That is understandable, but it is not what this post is about. This Gemini is an Internet protocol: a small, deliberately limited way to publish and read documents online. It sits somewhere between Gopher and the web. That is not a perfect description, but it gets the basic idea across. Gopher was simple and menu-driven. The web became flexible enough to carry documents, applications, video, commerce, tracking,…

IRC is one of those Internet technologies that always seems to be on the edge of being declared dead. It has looked old for most of its life. It does not have reactions, algorithmic feeds, typing bubbles, voice rooms, sticker stores, or a product team trying to turn conversation into an engagement funnel. By the standards of modern chat systems, it is almost embarrassingly plain, and yet it is still here. That persistence is not hard to understand if you have spent time with it. IRC does a…