Jean Armour Polly, often referred to by her online name of NetMom, is usually credited with being the first person to use the term web surfing. She herself writes that she used the term (or actually, surf the net) in a short article she wrote in 1992. Polly is a librarian, so even if she's been given credit, identifying the true original source of the term is important to her. In an additional short article of hers she writes that Mark McCahill, usually credited with developing the Gopher protocol, also used the term, independently of her, at about the same time. In that piece she points to two others that used a similar term a bit earlier.
Frankly, I'm less interested in who first used the term, than whether its use stems from metaphorically surfing a wave as on a surfboard, or from "channel surfing" which Wikipedia tells us was first used in a Wall Street Journal article in 1986. The two are significantly different. McCahill, in a correspondence with Polly included in the second piece above, explained his use of the term:
I can tell you why I used the phrase. One of my favorite sports is windsurfing, so 'surfing' is never far from my mind... that and extending the 'channel surfing' metaphor to the internet because we thought that browsing was an important way of finding information. If you have ever seen my garage (I think there are 8 or 10 sailboards there) or my office (1 board) know why I would say something about surfing the internet.But that explanation, rather than clarifying, actually confuses things. The accepted meaning of "channel surfing" isn't a seeking out of information, but an "activity" carried out by couch potatoes who on the whole are indifferent to what they're watching on television and simply zap around to waste their time. Paul Brians, a professor of English at Washington State University (whose website, probably predominantly long dormant, is a classic example of mid-sixties web design even more retro than the Boidem) traces web surfing (or surfing the net) to channel surfing. He writes:
"Channel-surfing" developed as an ironic term to denote the very unathletic activity of randomly changing channels on a television set with a remote control. Its only similarity to surfboarding on real surf has to do with the esthetic of "going with the flow." The Internet could be a fearsomely difficult place to navigate until the World Wide Web was invented; casual clicking on Web links was naturally quickly compared to channel-surfing, so the expression "surfing the Web" was a natural extension of the earlier expression. But the Web is only one aspect of the Internet, and you label yourself as terminally uncool if you say "surfing the Internet." (Cool people say "Net" anyway.) It makes no sense to refer to targeted, purposeful searches for information as "surfing"; for that reason I call my classes on Internet research techniques "scuba-diving the Internet."Riding a wave, as opposed to clicking on a remote, demands focus and concentration. In web terms, surfing a wave suggests following an ongoing series of links in a logical, rather than a haphazard, manner so that where we end up has real meaning for the surfer. Randomly clicking on links, or doing so purposefully, with an awareness of where the wave is headed, may both be wastes of time (or at least both means of passing the time) but one is passive, even apathetic, while the other is active, with the surfer emotionally involved in deciding where he or she is headed. When I write about surfing the web the "correct" etymology of the term is important to me. I want to make sure that readers know that I'm referring to an active, and positive, experience.