Has Web Surfing Hit A Dead End?

By: Wayne Robins During the long holiday weekend, it seemed just the right time to engage in a long-deferred pursuit: surfing. So I booted up the computer, put on my dry suit, and tried to relive those free-wheeling days of four or five years ago when I'd find endless hours of pleasure aimlessly surfing the Web.

Sure, it was slow then, hitting the virtual water with little more than a 28.8-bps dial-up modem connection and the aptly named WebCrawler for navigation.

But I loved the randomness: I never knew whether I'd be looking at a Chinese restaurant menu from Bozeman, Mont., or a thesis on waste-water treatment from Ratsborough State. There was lunacy: Monty Pythonesque political rants, demented cartoons, recipes from Mauritania, the Inuit alphabet, URLs you had to bookmark because you'd never find them again.

But I hadn't spent a weekend surfing in years, and, apparently, quite a few others have gotten a life as well. Recently, a New York Times article by Amy Harmon was headlined "Exploration of World Wide Web Tilts from Eclectic to Mundane." Harmon's sad but undoubtedly true points: "The Web has become a routine electronic device" used for specific functions. People are spending more time online, but in fewer places, with many visiting as few as half a dozen sites a month. For many in the news business, that's good news: People are regularly going to news sites such as those of MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and others for information.

But for those who want to surf, it's harder than ever to get lost on the road to nowhere.

The site known as Random.com tells the story of the Internet as it has stagnated. Random.com exists primarily because a company called Web This Way acquired the domain name. The plan: "a site serving up a diverse selection of Random Categorized Links."

Random Categorized Links! It's as if the Internet were run by a cadre of mad library scientists. If you categorize randomness, randomness isn't random anymore! The list of categories begins with Pro Wrestling.

But such categorization is the wave of the present. On another site, RandomWebLinks(.com), the categories are in alphabetical order. Arts & Humanities, Business & Economy, ... Last Monday, the Regional link took one to the home page of The Yuma (Ariz.) Daily Sun.

Well, at least it was a newspaper, found by chance. Although I could find the Yuma paper by doing a search on E&P Online's Media Links page, there was something exciting about going to Yuma by chance rather than by choice. It is, to borrow a concept from Walker Percy, the difference between getting lost in the woods and coming upon a brilliant waterfall, and being driven to that waterfall in an air- conditioned tour bus. What we need is a newspaper Web ring, of random links: You won't know if you're getting the Los Angeles Times or the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., sports or school-lunch menus.

A few years ago, it seemed we could all be masters of our own curiosity, a kind of intellectual destiny impossible to predict or even control. Now it seems, we've settled for a seat on a bus we don't even drive.