alt Hacker NewsThe experience was very different on a NeXT computer.
WAIS was modeled after the built in DigitalLibrarian software. You would select a site in the upper pane, and enter a search term in the box in the middle, and a list of documents would come back in the bottom pane that you could double click and open. Very search engine like.
Gopher was structured and I think Gemini today still sticks with the format. You load a site and the hierarchy of links appeared in a column browser up top and selected documents appeared in the bottom pane.
WWW didn't seem like much in comparison because they were freeform documents without app level navigation support and there wasn't support for images or much formatting and people had not learned to make web pages so it was really hard to see the future of what it would grow to become.
I'm not known for picking winners :-(
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> people had not learned to make web pages
Because there wasn't a widespread usable browser until Mosaic came along, 2 1/2 years after WWW.
Something that just occurred to me: RAGs are almost Gopher for AIs.
My early career was defined by showing up ten minutes late to several revolutions in a row.
I had a friend who was the most junior developer on the Mosaic team and one day he took me to his office to show me a text document with an image in the middle of it. In theory I met Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina that day but I just wanted to go do something with my friend. I did not get it. At all. A year later my girlfriend had to re-explain it to me and then another few months later I applied to work there in a support role. I don't think she knew what to do with the level of enthusiasm I wasn't bringing to this opportunity.
A year after that I'm sitting in a bar after a tech convention in Chicago, wearing my Mosaic t-shirt, and someone said, 'where did you get that shirt?' When I told them we were on the team, you'd have thought I'd said we were Madonna's backup band.
I never entirely understood that "I'd rather be lucky than good" sentiment until my luck ran out, and now I know.