channel-surf

[Taka]

Today's traveling can be like watching TV, channel surfing through a bombardment of images too fast to read and too various to sort.

Is the 'channel surfing' a reduced adverbial clause and a modifier of 'watching TV'? Or is it a gerund like 'watching TV'? Or is it ambiguous?

 

[Barb_D]

Hi Taka,
I'd say that "channel surfing" means "watching TV, but flipping through the channels very quickly, not staying on any one channel for very long." It's a gerund all on its own.

Nice to see you here.

GG

 

[Taka]

Hi, GG! You are also a moderator here. Good.

Isn't it possible to take 'channel surfing' as the way we watch TV?

 

[Barb_D]

Sure, it's the way SOME people watch TV. But if you just watch one program, from start to finish, you are not channel surfing.

 

[Taka]

So 'watching TV' is not necessarily the same as 'channel surfing', much less as doing it through a bombardment of images too fast to read and too various to sort', right?

Then why is 'channel surfing through...' in apposition with 'watching TV'? 'Channel surfing' cannot be a restatement of 'watching TV', can it?

 

[Rover_KE]

Taka, the analogy in the original sentence is a very questionable one. Travelling is nothing like channel surfing on TV.

Barb has already answered your question.

Rover

 

[Taka]

Travelling is nothing like channel surfing on TV.

Would you still think the same way even with this context?

One problem, of course, is that everything is happening so quickly...The classical poets Homer and Virgil sang of travelers, but not ones crossing 11 time zones before noon. And nomads have always traveled across the earth, but on foot and in tune with the rhythm of the seasons and tradition...

All of us are time travelers now, able to fly in a few hours from the 21st century (downtown Tokyo, say) to the 13th (Bhutan, where costumes, houses and customs are maintained in strict medieval style). Tonight we can fly into the depths of winter – or into the arms of a family we have not seen for 20 years. And the shrinking of distances in space may blind us to the more significant distances that remain: flying from Beirut to Beijing to Bogotá on successive days – and finding the same amenities in each – we may underestimate the differences in value and assumption. The verities of the village green do not extend across the global village.

Thus traveling today can be like watching TV, channel surfing through a bombardment of images too fast to read and too various to sort. And traveling tomorrow, for many of us, removed from a firm sense of neighborhood or community or home, may involve an even keener sense of spiritual vertigo as we fall into a moral holding pattern, our values, like our bodies, up in the air (or lost in space).

 

[Taka]

They move from country to country so quickly that they learn and appreciate nothing,

but they can return home and proudly exclaim "I have been to 15 European nations!"

So you think 'channel surfing' here is the way to watch TV and grammatically it's a reduced adverbial clause and a modifier of 'watching TV'?

 

[5jj]

Would you still think the same way even with this context?

People might well have thought differently. I do wish those who ask questions here would give all potentially helpful context with the original question.

 

[Taka]

People might well have thought differently. I do wish those who ask questions here would give all potentially helpful context with the original question.

Which means you think with this context you think channel surfing in question is a modifier of watching TV?

 

[5jj]

Which means you think with this context you think channel surfing in question is a modifier of watching TV?

I don't know how you made that leap. I simply said that people might have thought differently. For example, Rover said that travelling was nothing like channel-surfing - which it isn't.

However, more context shows that the analogy was not inappropriate in this passage.

 

[Taka]

I don't know how you made that leap. I simply said that people might have thought differently.

When you said they might have thought differently, I thought you knew with that context there was a different way to interpret it from what they had suggested. I don't think I made a huge leap.

Anyway, thanks, everyone!

 

[Tdol]

It does no harm to give the wider context from the start. Things can look very different out of context.

 

[Taka]

It does no harm to give the wider context from the start. Things can look very different out of context.

Just out of curiosity, with this context, how would you interpret the channel surf in question, tdol?

 

[Tdol]

There are cases for both views, but I lean more towards it modifying watching TV than being a separate gerund.

 

[Taka]

Good! Now I'm happy receiving authentic certification, tdol!