Of Surfers and Spiders

The term "surfing the web" is a common terminology used when one searches the internet. But how did one relate surfing tides to browsing the web? Is spiders fond of water sports? The spider part is not completely impossible. When I was about five and living in China, I personally have the experience of spiders trying to share a bath with me. A spider about the size of an adult palm (damn healthy Chinese foods overgrowing these spiders!) dropped from the ceiling of the bathroom and made a splash on my bathtub while I was taking a bath in the evening. Oops! I seem to have gone astray from the topic.

Anyway, the terminology of "surfing the web" or "surfing the internet" originate from a librarian, called Jean Polly. Polly was an early internet user who wrote a series of articles online. In June 1992, she published a paper about technical writings done on the internet. For the title of the paper, she wants to use a metaphor that's expressed the fun of the internet. She wants something that would evoke a sense of randomness, chaos, and even danger. At the time, Polly was using a mouse pad from a library that's famous for printing pithy sayings on sportswear and mouse pads. Coincidentally, Polly was using a mouse pad that has a picture of a surfer on a big wave with the words "Information Surfer" underneath. Eureka, Polly got her metaphor. She published a paper titled "Surfing the Internet" that was remarkably successful. The paper achieved 500 downloads in 14 hours. That was a lot back when the internet wasn't very popular.

In one of the readings I made in English class, I stumble upon the idea that a good and supporting audience encourages the writer to publish more works (B. F. Skinner). Polly experienced a similar scenario. Her paper "Surfing the Internet" attracted such a large audience that Polly tries to better the paper. She updated and corrected her paper on May 1993. The revised paper is able to gain an even higher popularity than her old one. The term "surfing" is now gaining acceptance and have been used on several other medias such as the New York Times, the Washing Post, the Wall Street Journal. Up to the present, this term still remains popular as we are all still using it.