[HN Gopher] The women who coined the expression 'surfing the int...
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The women who coined the expression 'surfing the internet' (2019)
Author : cfcfcf
Score : 77 points
Date : 2024-03-04 17:20 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.surfertoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.surfertoday.com)
| pattisapu wrote:
| "The Adventures of Captain Internet and CERF Boy" made me think
| of Vint Cerf. :)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| We didn't "Surf the Internet", we surfed the _Information
| Superhighway_. Before that we "browsed" like ruminants,
| consuming slowly with very strong stomachs, and sometimes
| regurgitating. Then we got caught in the "Web". Time's fun when
| you're having flies, as the spider joked.
| diggan wrote:
| > We didn't "Surf the Internet", we surfed the Information
| Superhighway
|
| For many of us, it was more like the "Information Country Road"
| with the speeds we had. I don't think I had ADSL access until
| 2006/2007 sometime, then it actually felt like a super highway.
| But before that, "paddling the Internet" would have been more
| accurate.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Yeah but you could get information from _anywhere_ and if you
| grew up traveling on the Interstate system, it still felt
| like you could be "instantly" transported to a piece of
| knowledge. It was still hecka faster than getting to your
| local library, browsing through the card catalog, and only
| _then_ looking something up in an index (at the back of a
| book), if your library even had it.
|
| Of course, we weren't on there for the books, but for the
| people.
|
| Even at 1200 baud you could be more or less instantly
| transported to university systems all across the country.
| count wrote:
| Most superhighways move at 1-5mph due to traffic
| congestion... so it's still valid :)
| Solvency wrote:
| "The future is now. Soon every American home will integrate
| their television, phone, and computer. You'll be able to visit
| the Louvre on one channel, and watch female mud wrestling on
| another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal
| Kombat with a friend in Vietnam. There's no end to the
| possibilities."
|
| -- Chip Douglas, The Cable Guy
| dalmo3 wrote:
| > or play Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam. There's no
| end to the possibilities.
|
| Well, sadly, that very example _is_ impossible in practical
| terms.
| jasode wrote:
| _> We didn't "Surf the Internet", we surfed the Information
| Superhighway. _
|
| The meme _" surf the internet"_ gained wide currency pretty
| much immediately.
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Surf+the+Inter...
|
| And a 1994 book title used it: https://www.amazon.com/Surf-
| Internet-Bundle-Neil-Randall/dp/...
| Lammy wrote:
| We used to be "Navigating" and "Exploring", implying deep water
| and unknown riches on the other side. It's pretty apt then how
| "surfing" implies shallow waters in a static location where the
| """content""" comes to you.
| justin66 wrote:
| I don't think I ever witnessed anyone use the term "information
| superhighway" for any purpose other than mockery of the term
| "information superhighway."
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Never. Like one badly advised politician on TV, once ever!
| And maybe Fred Dinenage on the Computer Programme, or
| something [0,1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Programme
|
| [1] https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/a-brave-
| new...
| justin66 wrote:
| By "witnessed" I meant in person. By "mockery" I meant
| mockery of politicians and cluesless media personalities.
|
| I mean, who talks like that?
|
| (I did have one especially goofy friend once confide in me
| that he had been "surfing the nets")
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| It must be an American thing because I only remember hearing
| it in one episode of The Simpsons. Can you imagine if it was
| the normal term?
|
| "I must remember to get my information superhighway connected
| as soon as I move into my new apartment!"
|
| "Hey is your information superhighway dropping out? Mine is."
|
| "Did you hear Jenna had her pictures leaked on the
| information superhighway?"
| milesvp wrote:
| "I wanted something that expressed the fun I had using the
| internet, as well as hit on the skill, and yes, endurance
| necessary to use it well."
|
| I miss how fun the internet used to be. There is something lost
| with the current torrent of entertainment that is readily fed
| through popularity based algorithms. Hacker news is about as
| close as I get to that feeling, but it's not the same since it's
| completely hub and spoke. Youtube can come close in a similar
| way, if you stay away from shorts. But, what I really miss, is
| how often I found myself falling off the web into other places on
| the internet. gopher and telnet and archie. There were these
| other places to explore, and because the net was so much smaller
| it made sense to explore.
|
| FWIW, I've had a similar sensation playing on a shared minecraft
| server recently, the stuff people build is so varying and
| interesting.
| munk-a wrote:
| I'd argue that the internet today actually requires more skill
| to use than it did back in the day - it's difficult to avoid
| the content blackholes that exist and, if you're truly
| masochistic, you could try the "Browse through twenty site
| links without ever submitting a request to facebook.com"
| challenge - assuming you're not using an ad/domain blocker
| (which you should be).
|
| There are a lot of extremely niche things on the internet still
| and I agree that Youtube (and Nebula!) are where they mostly
| reside. Sadly gone are the days when just typing up some
| rudimentary HTML would qualify as engaging content to most
| people... I met my wife on a MUD - but now you need webcams,
| editors and production value to make content.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Not true: I've been publishing posts on my blog multiple
| times daily for almost 20 years without a webcam, editor, or
| production value.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Even "I'm Feeling Lucky" was interesting long ago. Back then,
| the median website was pretty interesting, and you had a
| pretty good chance of finding something great randomly. Now,
| it just sends you to canned, boring product SERP pages and
| Wikipedia pages. If you actually had an interface that
| pointed you to a uniformly random web site, you're mostly
| going to get SEO spam and machine-generated content.
| raytopia wrote:
| You may really enjoy Neocities [0] it is full of websites that
| you explore.
|
| [0] https://neocities.org/
| causi wrote:
| The submission title is wrong. The title of the article is _The
| women who coined the expression 'Surfing the Internet'_ not
| "woman", reflecting the two people the article discusses.
| dang wrote:
| Whoa good catch. Fixed now. Thanks!
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Okay now we need to track down that "information surfer" mousepad
| and figure out who designed it.
| dang wrote:
| https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/49
| commieneko wrote:
| The term Channel Surfing predates all this by at least a decade.
| I first heard the term in the early '80, about the time when
| cable systems starting becoming the norm.
|
| It's not too much a stretch to go from channel surfing to
| internet surfing.
|
| Similar phrases that were, as it were, in the water at the time:
| bar surfing, bedroom surfing, boy/girl surfing.
|
| I suspect a lot of these usages were regional, I know "bedroom
| surfing" was something I heard while living in Los Angeles. But
| "bar surfing" (and bar hopping) was common in the south as well.
|
| Not trying to take anything away from anyone who first published
| the internet variations of this. But it was a thing before the
| internet.
| commieneko wrote:
| Come to think of it, cable surfing was also something that I
| remember.
| gweinberg wrote:
| Yeah, I had always assumed "surfing the internet" just grew out
| of "channel surfing".
| iisan7 wrote:
| And couch surfing, which OED found a citation for from 1987.
| Still, applying it in a new context is worth something.
| eggoa wrote:
| In the library of my high school, circa 1995, there were a couple
| computers for student use. There was a sign near them saying "No
| Surfing".
| RankingMember wrote:
| "Bess can't go there"
| kirse wrote:
| What a throwback. Used to run cgi-proxy to tiptoe around ol'
| Bessie.
| wolpoli wrote:
| We don't surf the internet anymore. We now scroll social media.
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| As a teen in the 90's, I remember the first time I heard someone
| use the terms "surfing the internet", "surfing the web",
| "information superhighway", "cyber- _anything_ "... I can assure
| you the terms were as cringe back then as they are today. I half-
| suspect the desperate attempts by the media to make it sound hip
| to boomers may well have set adoption back years.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I was a teen in the 2000s and in my cultural sphere they
| weren't considered cringey at all (in fact, in 2000s UK we
| didn't really have a concept of cringe like we have today)
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I'm also a kid of the 90s and I still use it :) At least in
| German, "im Internet surfen" has always been a completely
| normal expression for, well, surfing the internet. What would
| the hip people use instead?
| zamadatix wrote:
| To me "Surfing the internet" is a bit formal but "surfing the
| net" or "surfing the web" is still a non-cringe thing said at
| the office and we're a bunch of computer networking engineers.
| "Information superhighway" has always been a cliche for me
| though... but I was quite young in the 90s and it had really
| died off by the 2000s anyways. Cyber- largely depends on the
| thing to me. E.g. cyberspace - about neutral, cybersecurity -
| not at all cringe, cyberculture - cringey, cyberbullying -
| neutral (as in the term, not the act), cybernetics - usually
| cringey, cybercafe - cringey/outdated, and so on.
| 404mm wrote:
| Tell me you don't know anything about internet without telling
| me... I completely agree.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > make it sound hip to boomers
|
| What the heck is going on with this "age cohort" crap? The guys
| pumping out the technology in the 90s were born in the 50s and
| 60s.
|
| It was news to over 90% of the population, nothing to do with
| age. Sheesh.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| pretty silly to credit someone for "surfing the web" when surfing
| was already used in the context of TVs, etc.
| __lbracket__ wrote:
| Don't you undermine this momentous achievement you toxic
| patriarch !
|
| /s
| mtmail wrote:
| At Yahoo! the department that maintained the directory of
| websites was called 'surfing' and the employees were 'surfers'.
| Their full-time job was to add summaries and categorize new
| websites. And who could forget the huge project of extending the
| 10 top level categories to 16?
| xrd wrote:
| I'm surprised the .surf TLD is not more popular. It's only $20 on
| Cloudflare and a few others.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Does it jack up after a few years? A lot of the lower priced
| ones do that. $20 year one, $2000 year 3.
| xrd wrote:
| Renewals appear to be only $20 or so.
| lindner wrote:
| It's interesting that this article didn't mention Gopher, which
| was developed at the University of Minnesota. Jean Amour Polly
| would have definitely known about it, as back then the Gopher
| Team was all about creating Digital Libraries.
|
| And Mark McCahill was a ardent Windsurfer, which resulted in this
| shirt, designed by his partner Wendy Jedeckila, way back in 1991!
|
| https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10274778...
| nerdingaround wrote:
| Nifty little article and comments. Who know some many people used
| the term "surfing the internet" back then?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| _The Adventures of Captain Internet And CERF Boy_ , October 1991.
|
| "The LAN that time forgot"
|
| https://archive.org/details/CaptainInternetAndCERFBoyNumber1...
| NoPicklez wrote:
| It's a good name, to me it's similar to "browsing the internet".
| Which in my mind is just "looking" around on the internet without
| necessarily contributing as such, like posting on blogs, playing
| names, sending emails etc.
|
| Browsing the internet like just browsing in a store.
|
| I guess we use Browsers to Browse the internet.
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