For all the drawbacks, it is not hard to feel nostalgic about the early days of the web. Surfing between slow-loading, badly designed sites on a dial-up internet connection running at 56 kilobits per second could be frustrating. No wonder it was known as the “world wide wait”. But the “wow” factor was high. There was unparalleled access to free news and information, even if some of it was deeply untrustworthy. Then came that first, revelatory search on Google, which untangled the online jumble with almost miraculous speed.
鑒于當前存在的各種缺陷，人們難免會對萬維網發展的早期階段產生懷念。通過每秒傳輸56KB（千字節）的撥號方式訪問載入緩慢、設計糟糕的網站，或許會讓人頗有挫敗感。難怪萬維網(World Wide Web)曾被戲稱為是“全球等待網”(world wide wait)。但與此同時令人驚嘆的元素也層出不窮。萬維網提供了無與倫比地自由獲取新聞和信息的渠道，即便其中部分內容很不可靠。隨后出現了首個開創性的搜索引擎谷歌(Google)，它用近乎神奇的速度理順了亂成一團的網絡信息。