Gemini: a new, constrained version of the web.
The project page states that it's "heavier than gopher," "lighter than the web," "will not replace either," "strives for maximum power to weight ratio," and "takes user privacy very seriously." Wikipedia thinks it was "started by a pseudonymous person known as Solderpunk."
What we know as the World Wide Web, a phrase so pervasive-sounding that one nearly assumes it could only ever be the only thing of its kind, is only a part of the Internet, so to speak. The Internet is simply a network across which data can be sent. The World Wide Web is made of data structured according to a particular protocol called "HTTP," or the "HyperText Transfer Protocol." "Gemini" is a separate, new, protocol.
What seems to differentiate Gemini from the World Wide Web is that its evolution is deliberately constrained. The web began humbly as a protocol for publishing text, links, images and other files, but over decades was innovated upon by various companies and eventually coordinated and nurtured by standards bodies to support audio, video, touch interfaces, cookies, interactivity, 2D and 3D graphics, and enough other recent technologies to be a substantial modern platform in its own right. Today it's quite powerful and accessible from all major web browsers, but also "bloated" by comparison to its original form. Today's web sites can theoretically be as simple and lightweight as they were originally designed to be, but sometimes aren't.
Gemini, apparently, strives not to evolve beyond its original form. I believe it supports text and files, and it requires secure connections, but that's about it.
In a way, something like this feels deserved. Any surmountable barriers of language or sensory disability aside, much if not most of the Internet's value takes the form of text, which needn't be impeded by other swaths of technology.
Just as web browsers are designed to make requests and receive responses conforming to HTTP, "Gemini clients" are designed to request and retrieve content in their respective space.
I've tried using a terminal-based app called Amfora to browse a little. (Feeling as though I'd missed the period when "terminals" were all computers were, I've had a penchant for exploring within such environments, so that's appealed to me, and Gemini's text-based nature suits it well.) Gemini is successful enough that there are many destinations to visit, but new enough that exploring by encountering and following links – a pattern inherent to the early web – still feels more effective and promising than resorting to its one and only featured search engine. When I'd finally found a directory of hosts, selected a host, selected a post, and discovered a page containing a handful of paragraphs about a stranger's stray thoughts, I considered the promise realized.
People have developed a number of Gemini clients for major platforms, and a number of those are designed after web browsers, complete with windows, tabs, bookmarks, and basic theming and styling of content. (Search for "Gemini client.")
So far, Gemini feels a little like the web originally felt. I loved the way the web originally felt. I think the web became what it became largely because people didn't appreciate enough, or didn't know enough, or didn't imagine enough, to insist on its personalness above its corporateness or businessness. It's initially tempting to believe that Gemini might single-handedly balance that out, or at least favour personalness within its still relatively hidden portion of the Internet, but I think the reliable achievement of such an elevation must begin within people's minds in wider-spread fashion.
I'd guess such an intention must at least have been present within the mind of "Solderpunk." They seem to have done more than the average person in making this Gemini-shaped dent.