The net is like a huge vandalized library. Someone has destroyed the catalog
and removed the front matter, indexes, etc., from hundreds of thousands of
books and torn and scattered what remains...and the walls are covered with
graffiti. "Surfing" is the process of sifting through this disorganized
mess in the hope of coming across some useful fragments of text and images
that can be related to other fragments. The net is even worse than a
vandalized library because thousands of additional unorganized fragments
are added daily by the myriad cranks, sages, and persons with time on their
hands who launch their unfiltered messages in cyberspace.
- Michael Gorman, Library Journal 120:15