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Gopher
The Internet is made up of many networks and types of services. The multimedia capabilities of the Web get the most attention from the public and the press, but remember, networked computers can do other things besides show pictures and play sounds. They can, for example, quickly and efficiently store and retrieve information.
Gopher is one of these very powerful functions. If you've done much surfing, you might have come across text-only sites whose URL in the Location box begins gopher://. These are called gopher sites,and you can gain access to them directly through your browser.(See the site Debate Central, for an example.) But you have to know about these sites, or be taken there by a hotlink, in order to find them.
You'll need a two-part vehicle to use gopher: a small gopher program (called a client) on your computer which connects you to a powerful gopher engine (a server) ata university or institution. The client can be downloaded for free. The gopher client called WSGopher (others are available).
Start up the AT&T Worldnet Service Dialer, then minimize it on your screen. This gives the gopher a way into the network through the connection established by the dialer. Now run the gopher program. If all goes well, you'll see a window that asks you to specify a home gopher. It gives you space to write the addresses of two home gophers, but only one is necessary. You'll soon come across the addresses of many gopher servers that could be used here. For now, you can start with one located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. by entering gopher.uiuc.edu in the Name field of the window, and in the Port field enter 70. This will connect you to the server and you'll be on your way.
Once connected,you'll find window after window of directory titles that can be opened to reveal further directories or text files. Some of these concern the university (Welcome to the University, Campus Announcements) and some let you connect to other gophers. Under Other Gopher and Information Servers you can connect to directories on weather, psychology, birding, and much more. Look for an entry called Search Titles in Gopherspace Using Veronica. This puts you into a special search engine that lets you specify keywords.