Surfing the Internet

Jean Armour Polly is a librarian who takes credit for first coining the phrase "surfing the Internet" and she explains what inspired her in 1992:

In casting about for a title for the article , I weighed many possible metaphors. 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 also needed something that would evoke a sense of randomness, chaos, and even danger. I wanted something fishy, net-like, nautical.

At that time I was using a mouse pad from the Apple Library in Cupertino, CA, famous for inventing and appropriating pithy sayings and printing them on sportswear and mouse pads (e.g., "A month in the Lab can save you an hour in the Library") The one I had pictured a surfer on a big wave. "Information Surfer" it said. "Eureka," I said, and had my metaphor.

Polly remains Executive Director of Liverpool Public Library in Liverpool, NY (a suburb of Syracuse). Polly's article indicates "how librarians and libraries can benefit from net
connectivity":

I'll be using the Internet, the global network of computers and their
interconnections, which lets me skip like a stone across oceans and
continents and control computers at remote sites.

The phrase "channel surfing" using a television remote control existed in the late 1980s, but was not the inspiration for "surfing the internet" - supposedly. The popularization of the term was surely related as consumers used surfing the in the television context and as the Internet grew there became a new media for surfing. Had Polly not written her article, I believe society would have settled on "Internet surfing" or some other similar expression to describe online searching. However, Polly gets the credit and I appreciate the image of a librarian's mouse pad defining what to call what is among the most popular activities in the world today.