29 jun 2010
‘Couch surfing’ is by far the most sympathetic infrastructure I have yet come across. Since December 2006 I am an active participant. I have surfed several couches, and many have surfed mine in return. Couch surfing is an ICT based network and a true community. If it weren’t for the Internet, I have a hard time imagining it would be able to exist. Nevertheless, couch surfing does not remain restricted to virtuality: surfing the web and real travel go hand in hand. The kinds of connections it aims at are real face-to-face encounters.
Meet Zeena, for example. She works for a think tank in Washington D.C. I have done some research in the American capital as a PhD. Our roads might have crossed there and then, but they did not. Zeena has lived in different places in Europe and the US, before moving to the shores of the Potomac. A bright young mind in our human world of whom there are many more. In other words, we all know Zeenas, but there’s many more we neither know nor will get to know.
Yet in the end I did meet Zeena last September – and it was wonderful. I accompanied her on a trip to Rotterdam. We were lucky: the World Port Days were happening. Choirs and artists were adding a lively hue to the city. We ate smoked eel, poffertjes (Dutch mini pancakes) and a Surinam bara sandwich (a remnant of the Dutch colonial past), in short all typically Dutch delicacies. We strolled endlessly along the river and through different neighborhoods. We went to the Architecture Institute and the Sonneveld House, a design marvel that I had never visited before, despite having lived close to Rotterdam during all my life.
Was I showing Zeena around, or vice versa? Both were happening at the same time. It fits with the goals the organizers of couch surfing have set themselves. Their self-defined ‘experience engine’ seeks to promote people to explore and connect. I have not known Zeena for a long time – and chances are that I will never meet her again. But that does not matter. There are countless Zeenas. Zeena represents all persons who might have come to Delft in her stead. Established in 2004, today a million couch surfers travel the globe to exchange, create friendships, and learn from the inside out. They might never meet otherwise, but through a sophisticated site they “are able to share hospitality and cultural understanding”, and “create a global community.”
Couch surfing is thus part of a virtual reality with real-life consequences. Zeena has become part of my life as have all other surfers who have honored me with their presence. Couch surfing continuously creates temporary crossroads where its users meet and share their homes, as if they had known each other for their entire lives. Would you invite the first stranger you’d meet on the street? Probably not. But couch surfers do so by the thousands, equipped with a simple feedback mechanism to ensure a basic level of trust. Thus couch surfing supports ad hoc rendezvous across the globe between very diverse human beings. Their electronic messages result in geographically locatable experiences and fond memories. “Imagine there’s a fun, safe and easy way to meet people from all over the world.” Now there is. Sign up today and celebrate human hospitality.
