WEBVTT 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:05.120 I was born in nineteen eighty-nine, which means I was maybe seven or eight when I first started noticing the discs. 00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:11.680 At the grocery store, there was always a little stack of them near the gum. 00:01:11.680 --> 00:01:16.000 We found them inside cereal boxes. 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:21.200 At some point we had so many we stuck them on our bedroom walls. 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:26.719 You would balance them on your index finger and look at your reflection. 00:01:26.719 --> 00:01:31.120 A tiny funhouse mirror full of rainbows. 00:01:31.120 --> 00:01:37.359 They were just part of the texture of being alive in America in the 90s. 00:01:37.359 --> 00:01:40.079 Like 'Got Milk?' commercials. 00:01:40.079 --> 00:01:43.359 Or the smell of scented markers. 00:01:43.359 --> 00:01:45.840 I didn't know what they were for. 00:01:45.840 --> 00:01:48.159 I just knew they were everywhere. 00:01:48.159 --> 00:01:52.000 Someone put them there. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:56.480 I'm Daina Bouquin. 00:01:56.480 --> 00:01:59.200 This is Found in the Machine. 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:07.200 Her name was Jan Brandt. 00:02:07.200 --> 00:02:11.439 On Friday nights, she went to Blockbuster. 00:02:11.439 --> 00:02:17.840 She'd pick up eight movies at a time because she didn't know what mood she'd be in by Sunday. 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:22.159 One night she noticed a box by the register. 00:02:22.159 --> 00:02:24.800 Inside were product samples. 00:02:24.800 --> 00:02:28.479 You'd get a box free if you rented three movies. 00:02:28.479 --> 00:02:39.360 So she took two boxes, walked into her office at AOL on Monday morning, and said, we need to put a disc in here. 00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:47.680 Jan Brandt had come up as a copywriter, moved into sales, and eventually shifted to direct mail marketing. 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:52.560 That work taught her something most marketers don't learn. 00:02:52.560 --> 00:03:00.000 The physical object you pull from the mailbox is doing work before it ever gets opened. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:02.639 The weight of it in your hand. 00:03:02.639 --> 00:03:10.000 It can shape the decision, in a fraction of a second, about whether to open it or throw it away. 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:13.759 She had developed an absolute belief. 00:03:13.759 --> 00:03:21.360 A belief that you could not send someone a real package in the mail and have them not open it. 00:03:21.360 --> 00:03:23.199 A package. 00:03:23.199 --> 00:03:25.599 Not an envelope. 00:03:25.599 --> 00:03:28.080 Something you could really feel. 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:37.439 In 1993, AOL CEO Steve Case brought her in with a mandate: grow the subscriber base. 00:03:37.439 --> 00:03:42.240 She was given control of AOL's entire marketing strategy. 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:48.319 So she set out to make the internet feel inevitable. 00:03:48.319 --> 00:03:58.080 To understand what that meant, you need to remember what getting online actually looked like in the early 90s. 00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:05.280 Before AOL simplified everything, connecting to the internet was a genuinely technical act. 00:04:05.280 --> 00:04:10.159 You had to find a local access number for your area. 00:04:10.159 --> 00:04:13.599 You had to understand protocols. 00:04:13.599 --> 00:04:17.519 And if you didn't, you had to read a manual. 00:04:17.519 --> 00:04:24.240 Brandt had sat in focus groups watching people try to figure out computers for the first time. 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:31.759 One person held the mouse in the air, pointing at the TV screen like a TV remote. 00:04:31.759 --> 00:04:38.800 She remembered seeing another put it on the floor and try to work it like a sewing machine pedal. 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:41.439 They were not going to read a manual. 00:04:41.439 --> 00:04:44.639 They were not going to configure anything. 00:04:44.639 --> 00:04:46.879 And they were everyone. 00:04:46.879 --> 00:04:55.600 The internet was not a place most Americans had been, and it was a place that required you to already know your way in. 00:04:55.600 --> 00:04:59.600 AOL was trying to change that. 00:04:59.600 --> 00:05:06.079 But at the time it was a distant third, or fourth, in the online services market. 00:05:06.079 --> 00:05:12.959 And almost nobody could explain what the internet actually was in a way that made someone want it. 00:05:12.959 --> 00:05:16.720 It made advertising nearly impossible. 00:05:16.720 --> 00:05:20.480 You couldn't put it on a billboard. 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:24.639 You couldn't capture it in a TV commercial. 00:05:24.639 --> 00:05:29.839 But what you could do was put it in someone's hand. 00:05:29.839 --> 00:05:43.279 Each of those discs had a clear polycarbonate core, a thin aluminum layer to hold the data, and a coating of lacquer on top. 00:05:43.279 --> 00:05:46.720 Light and cheap to make. 00:05:46.720 --> 00:05:49.199 Not biodegradable. 00:05:49.199 --> 00:05:55.120 Brandt's team could produce them by the millions and ship them everywhere. 00:05:55.120 --> 00:05:57.120 And she intended to. 00:05:57.120 --> 00:06:03.040 She launched what she herself called a carpet bombing strategy. 00:06:03.040 --> 00:06:10.160 It started with floppy disks in 1993 and shifted quickly to CD-ROMs. 00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:17.120 The strategy wasn't just to mail them, it was to make them inescapable. 00:06:17.120 --> 00:06:22.160 The discs turned up in magazines next to the perfume samples. 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:25.600 They were at the bank by the deposit slips. 00:06:25.600 --> 00:06:29.920 In your fast food order with your napkins. 00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:35.199 On the airline meal tray between the pretzels and the ginger ale. 00:06:35.199 --> 00:06:42.639 If your eyes landed somewhere, the odds were decent that a disc was nearby. 00:06:42.639 --> 00:06:47.360 And then there were the Omaha steaks. 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:52.639 Omaha Steaks shipped frozen orders all over the country. 00:06:52.639 --> 00:06:55.839 Brandt wanted a disc in every package. 00:06:55.839 --> 00:06:58.720 The problem was obvious. 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:05.040 It would have to survive being frozen solid, thawed, then stuck in someone's computer. 00:07:05.040 --> 00:07:15.439 Before her team could commit, they flash froze a floppy disk, let it thaw, and found out whether it still worked. 00:07:15.439 --> 00:07:17.279 It did. 00:07:17.279 --> 00:07:20.160 The disk went out with the steaks. 00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:28.720 As the software grew more complex, the pressure to go to two discs grew with it. 00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:31.680 She absolutely refused. 00:07:31.680 --> 00:07:41.680 She was, in her own words, "crazed about it." Getting the disc into someone's hand was worthless if it came with friction. 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:48.079 The whole point was that you picked it up, you put it in, and the door opened. 00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:52.160 One disc, one step, one door. 00:07:52.160 --> 00:07:57.839 She understood that the internet wasn't something you could sell. 00:07:57.839 --> 00:08:00.720 You could only give it away. 00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:05.600 And you had to give it away until people forgot there was a time before it. 00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:10.399 The scale of what followed is almost impossible to comprehend. 00:08:10.399 --> 00:08:16.240 At the peak of the campaign, AOL had distributed over a billion free trial discs. 00:08:16.240 --> 00:08:23.519 50% of all CD-ROMs manufactured in the entire world bore the AOL logo. 00:08:23.519 --> 00:08:26.959 Not 50% of promotional discs. 00:08:26.959 --> 00:08:36.559 50% of all discs, including music albums and software. The campaign cost at least $300 million. 00:08:36.559 --> 00:08:44.159 But AOL grew from 200,000 members to over 22 million. 00:08:44.159 --> 00:08:49.519 At its peak, they were signing up new subscribers every six seconds. 00:08:49.519 --> 00:08:54.720 And then the system broke. 00:08:54.720 --> 00:09:01.279 In December 1996, AOL switched to flat rate pricing. 00:09:01.279 --> 00:09:04.559 Unlimited access for a monthly fee. 00:09:04.559 --> 00:09:07.200 It was the right call competitively. 00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:10.240 And it was also a disaster. 00:09:10.240 --> 00:09:15.759 The number of people trying to connect at once overwhelmed the infrastructure completely. 00:09:15.759 --> 00:09:22.879 On some evenings, roughly 15% of subscribers got a busy signal just trying to log on. 00:09:22.879 --> 00:09:27.279 Attorneys General around the country threatened lawsuits. 00:09:27.279 --> 00:09:30.159 AOL promised refunds. 00:09:30.159 --> 00:09:36.159 Steve Case made a commercial telling people the company was working day and night to fix it. 00:09:36.159 --> 00:09:43.600 The public dubbed the company "America on Hold." The campaign had worked. 00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:48.000 Brandt had gotten so many people through the door that the door was jammed. 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:53.759 As the infrastructure caught up and the congestion eased, the discs kept coming. 00:09:53.759 --> 00:09:57.919 But they had become a type of cultural noise. 00:09:57.919 --> 00:10:01.440 Everyone had stacks of them. 00:10:01.440 --> 00:10:04.000 Nobody needed more. 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:07.039 They were mocked in the press. 00:10:07.039 --> 00:10:12.480 PC World's readers voted them the most annoying tech product of all time. 00:10:12.480 --> 00:10:19.919 And because the discs were everywhere, the physical objects began a second life. 00:10:19.919 --> 00:10:29.519 The blue and white disc that had been millions of Americans' first contact with the internet became raw material. 00:10:29.519 --> 00:10:33.279 People used them as coasters. 00:10:33.279 --> 00:10:41.120 They hung them in gardens as suncatchers, shattered them to make lampshades and bowls. 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:50.080 One collector eventually built a glowing 150-pound throne out of 4,000 of them. 00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:54.879 And one of the early floppy discs was mailed to a man named Bernard S. 00:10:54.879 --> 00:10:58.879 Finn, promising 15 hours of free access. 00:10:58.879 --> 00:11:02.480 He never opened it. 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:04.399 He just kept it. 00:11:04.399 --> 00:11:11.679 That disc is now in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. 00:11:11.679 --> 00:11:16.559 Among the things the country has decided are worth remembering. 00:11:16.559 --> 00:11:19.200 Over a billion discs. 00:11:19.200 --> 00:11:27.679 The ones that didn't become folk art or end up in a museum mostly went in the trash. 00:11:27.679 --> 00:11:31.039 The ones that went in the trash are still there. 00:11:31.039 --> 00:11:42.960 Then, if you lived in the right place, broadband arrived. 00:11:42.960 --> 00:11:48.080 Getting online was no longer an event you prepared for. 00:11:48.080 --> 00:11:50.399 The connection was just there. 00:11:50.399 --> 00:11:53.759 The way water is there when you open a tap. 00:11:53.759 --> 00:11:59.279 By 2007, AOL had retired the campaign. 00:11:59.279 --> 00:12:06.559 They had mailed mountains of plastic across the earth so we could leave the physical world behind. 00:12:06.559 --> 00:12:10.879 And for most of us, it worked. 00:12:10.879 --> 00:12:15.919 But broadband did not arrive everywhere. 00:12:15.919 --> 00:12:22.159 A rancher in Montana still prints USDA forms and pays for postage. 00:12:22.159 --> 00:12:29.759 A student in Alabama does her homework in a McDonald's parking lot to access Wi-Fi. 00:12:29.759 --> 00:12:46.639 Laying fiber optic cable can cost anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per mile, depending on terrain, soil, and how many households a mile actually passes. 00:12:46.639 --> 00:12:51.039 Nobody agrees on the exact numbers. 00:12:51.039 --> 00:12:55.200 What everyone does agree on is that the math doesn't work. 00:12:55.200 --> 00:13:00.799 In a city, a mile might pass thousands of households. 00:13:00.799 --> 00:13:04.799 In rural Wyoming, it might pass three. 00:13:04.799 --> 00:13:11.039 No private company has ever fixed that equation. 00:13:11.039 --> 00:13:14.480 And no public policy has either. 00:13:14.480 --> 00:14:11.759 As of the 2024, 7.9 million American households were completely offline. AOL suspended all remaining dialup service in 2025. Millions of people still can't access broadband. On tribal lands, that number is nearly one out of every four people. For them, the only option is likely their cell phone when they can get a signal. It's that or satellite, and satellite isn't available everywhere. If you are one of these people, you remain isolated. The internet never became invisible. It's something you still need to work for. Jan Brandt handed millions of people the physical edge of something enormous. She gave us that moment when connection was something you could hold in your hand. 00:14:11.759 --> 00:14:13.919 It was round. 00:14:13.919 --> 00:14:17.679 And your fingerprints got all over the back. 00:14:17.679 --> 00:14:24.720 Now all that plastic waits in landfills. 00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:34.480 And in a farmhouse, somewhere without broadband, the people wait. 00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:39.279 I'm Daina Bouquin. 00:14:39.279 --> 00:14:42.559 This is Found in the Machine. 00:14:42.559 --> 00:14:59.600 Before you go, if you want to go deeper on any of these stories, I started a companion newsletter. Scripts, cut scenes, sources, and notes for me arriving with every episode. 00:14:59.600 --> 00:15:05.200 You can find it at notes.foundinthemachine.com. 00:15:05.200 --> 00:15:07.440 Thanks for listening.