"Browsing Isn't Surfing"... Whaaat?

In case you're wondering...

I first discovered the Web back in about 1991 ('92?). At the time I had a bleeding-edge, 14.4K modem, and an account on the old CORE (California Online Resources in Education), a toll-free dialup Internet connection provided free to California teachers. Mostly I was just reading and posting to LMNET, a listserv for "school librarians," but then I discovered this thing called the World Wide Web. At the time it was not graphical (at least not that I knew of): when logged onto CORE, I could type a command that would bring up a screen full of monochrome text (a Web page) with some words or phrases highlighted (silver letters in a black rectangle instead of black letters against silver on my also-bleeding-edge notebook computer--an actual computer the size of a three-ring binder I could place on my lap!). Using the arrow keys on my keyboard I could move the cursor to a word/phrase, hit , and a new page which was "linked" to that word/phrase would (slowly) scroll into being. Hypertext, with links to pages from all over the world (though there weren't such a mind-boggling number of them back then)! Wow!

As the Web became a phenomenon and began to be written about in the press, it wasn't long before I read the phrase, "Surfing the Web." As a long-time (since 1970) surfer (as in, riding ocean waves on a surfboard), this rankled me. I'd done enough Web browsing to know that the experience of typing URLs and clicking on links to jump from Web page to Web page, amazing as it was, was nothing like surfing. Paddling out, sitting in the lineup judging the swells, paddling for one, taking off, making the bottom turn, guessing every moment what that constantly-changing mass of ocean is going to do next and reacting to it with balance, speed, and the carving edges and shape of your board, deciding how long to continue and looking for an exit spot and maneuver... this is a completely different experience. Browsing the Web and surfing the sea are separate universes.

I figured some poor landlocked Webhead who'd never even paddled a board probably thought this would just sound really cool and so coined the phrase. While I vowed never to myself use the term "surf" to mean "browse" (the Web), I also realized this was already a battle I could not win, and that the term was just too cool-sounding for others to resist... especially when it continued to pop up in other articles and stories.

So when it came time to name my blog, I figured this will be my little revolt. Semantics may be for sissies (or old farts like myself), but I can't resist.