I n the same category of gyration as that performed by the GYROW A YES of exodus, these new wandering monks of no fixed abode, we might cite an eccentric practice that typifies the new form of travel for people in endless transit. Couch surfing is a mode of hospitality that consists in ofering free accommodation in your own home to travellers met over the Internet. With these j oint tenan ts for a night, the guest room turns into a room in a guest house for strangers.
To travel, to comb the world without having to part with any cash thanks to hitch-hiking and some couch-surfer network - that was the aim o f an idealist initiative launched i n 1949, after the Second World War, by Gary Davis, that apostle of a globalized citizenship which has today been cunningly diverted from its peaceful objectives.
Hotelier or Hospitaller o f the Net? With couchsurfing, the bl urring of genres is clear. Intimacy, once sought out of a sense of propriety, seems to be mistaken for concealment, as though of some shameful disease . . .
THE GREAT ACCELERATOR
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