I think this is the first viral post I’ve encountered since I started lurking in gemspace a little over a month ago.
The most important bit is this, from the end:
Gemini's obscurity and lack of utility means that there are no analytics, no metrics, no ways to go viral, to monetize people's attention, build a career or even a minimally-functional web platform. No sane business would build on top of Gemini, and that is exactly why it is capable of having the character that it does. It is a "resistance-in-place" to the existing web, the attention economy and surveillance capitalism.
I don’t necessarily disagree with this, but it misses what I find appealing about Gemini, as an advocate for degrowth.
Gemini, in spite of its apparent “lack of utility”, is an excellent demonstration of degrowth principles practice: we don’t need to use very much technology (read: energy and non-renewable resources) to have a worthwhile internet. The experience of browsing gemspace could as easily be implemented on a mesh network composed of low-power, easily-to-repair machines as it is on our current internet infrastructure.
If we understand the fundamental purpose of an “internet” to be connecting people and facilitating the exchange of information, Gemini is already useful. By proving that it’s possible to do these things without the destructive bloat of the modern web, Gemini is also important.