You know how Paul Graham says "build something people want". Well somehow I headed in exactly the opposite direction and designed some strange nondescript beast that mashed up linked data (remember that concept, no? doesn't matter you missed nothing), with JavaScript and the web into some sort of Gopher-ish linked data browser.

Basically with 15 lines of JavaScript you could navigate any http based open data API

I named it NeoGopher (New Gopher) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuSDU0JiI2c The madness starts at 1:30 (turn the sound down, the words serve only to confuse)

Essentially it let you browse through linked lists. Each list item could link on to another list or to a web page. Each list was created by about 15 lines of JavaScript which could be loaded from any web server and the data came from any HTTP web API.

Ahhh... so many meaningless words in the demo. Even I, who designed it, found it hard to explain what it was - today I would say "It's a linked list browser.", which is what Gopher was.

Of all the stupid ideas I have had (there have been many), re-inventing Gopher was probably the worst. What was I thinking?

btw this is an edited repost of a comment I made a while back on the Gopher topic.