Mmm. Of course "surface" as an intransitive verb has been well-established for at least decades – consider "the submarine surfaced" or the Boomtown Rats' album The Fine Art of Surfacing, for example.
And as a transitive verb it's been used for a long time as a term of art in construction, e.g. "we resurfaced the exterior with stucco". There it doesn't irritate me, perhaps due to familiarity, though its context as well-established jargon helps.
But yes, the growing popularity of the transitive verb in other contexts such as user interfaces – "the drop control surfaces additional controls for advanced features" – is abominable and should be met with disdain. This usage seems to be a condensation of "brings to the surface", which is already a circumlocution for "reveals" and other more-concise diction. It's false elevation (ooh, "surface", how sophisticated!), a particularly annoying form of anti-pragmatics.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
