Let's pay tribute to the term "surf the web".
You have been a good term when nobody except the inventor knew what the Web was and computer screens came with green dotty text bits on black background, the whole thing packed into a housing only slightly smaller than today's SMART car.
Surfing had the friendly connotation of sunshine, well groomed beaches with life guards to get out out of trouble. And, back then, who would not want to be saved by Pam or the Hoff?
Sure, surfing with its easy California or Hawaii lifestyle imagery was culturally biased towards the U.S., but that was fine.
Even landlocked Switzerland took to surfing the Web. To some, it was their dream of escaping the mountains, and the Germans to the north, come true. Others needed a bit of explaining that "no, a two-by-four is not a surf board, and neither is a keyboard".
But it worked out.
So, dear Surfing, thank you. After 25 years of Surfing, it is time to retire.
Snorkeling is a much better term for doing your thing on the web. Snorkeling does not come with the instant proficiency image attached, it evokes water wings, parents who anxiously try to look after their children.
Snorkeling does not have the six pack abs, bronzed body image -- and if you look at the obesity statistics in almost every country on the planet, snorkeling seems more accurate.
Surfing is between you, the board and the ocean, plus impressing the other sex.
Snorkeling has all of this but in different proportions, and snorkeling means you may get lost in the scenery, you may run out of breath if you do not go up for air in time. Or you may not notice a fast dark storm cloud or predators.
Snorkeling takes you close to creatures you have never seen before, some of which can hurt you badly, other creatures are camouflaged, stirred into action only by an inadvertent move on your part or by an innocent air bubble climbing up through the reef.
And wrecks! Wrecks upon wrecks.
Surfers avoid areas with wrecks. Snorkelers do not, especially if a friendly guide you just met at one of the dive bars on the beach (formerly called search engines) tells you a great story about a wreck you absolutely have to see. Don't wait until tomorrow, there might not be anything to see, the flow of the tide keeps bringing in more and more sediment.
The Web we snorkel over has colorful reefs, some of them artificial, with sites like Disney, it has the endless rolling mudflats of corporate web sites, dotted with small holes where you find colonies of worms or tiny crabs.
Where surfers like their beaches pristine, empty, and remote, and really want to be in the water all the time, snorkelers spend time on beaches. Populated beaches, where they buy their gear from the gear vendors. Like the all in one vendor with the same body suit all over the world, no matter what the local conditions are. A local label, that's it. Once you buy from them, you are stuck with them. The goggles and the snorkel are integrated, and rumor has it that some people nearly drowned when they tried to mix and match gear. There is a stylish vendor, from a former fruit company. Some say it was a nut company. They easily charge twice as much as the generic vendor, and for the longest time their suits were kind of funky. The moment they got wet, they'd become see through. Great for exhibitionists and voyeurs, a bit over the top for the other 95% of people.
There are others who make and sell their own gear, and they have improved. Early on, you would invariably have to sand off the mouthpiece or use duct tape to make the goggles hold under water.
And it is only from the beach that you can see boats out in the distance, trying to put up floating barriers, allegedly against sharks, sting rays and jelly fish. Though it seems odd that they are starting over at the wonderful white sand beach where the MacMansions are. You'd be forgiven to think they might be trying to separate your crowd of snorkelers from those over there.
But they reassure you, that's not what they are doing.
We hope to have given you an idea of why we will go snorkeling. Don't feel bad if you prefer surfing.
Anything that sticks around for 25 years is a long standing tradition, and we know how hard it is to change those.
One more thing:
Snorkeling is also much nicer towards places like Switzerland, because they have beautiful lakes, too small for surfing but great for snorkeling.
Not sure about Luxemburg, has anybody tried to snorkel in a pond?
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