Expertise
AOL’s little discs hold a big lesson for AI
AOL’s CDs democratized access for millions. What will do the same for AI?
When access became universal
The end of AOL’s dial-up service on September 30 may feel more symbolic than practical, after all, who still has a modem tucked in a closet? But symbols matter. AOL’s story is not just the end of a chapter of internet nostalgia for Millennials and Gen Xers. It’s a reminder of how mass marketing democratized technology and changed the way millions of people now live.
For many Americans, AOL wasn’t just their first internet provider, it was their first foray into an entirely new way of being connected. That history deserves more than a chuckle at the screech of a dial tone. It deserves reflection, because the strategies that made AOL so powerful still hold lessons for today’s technological revolutions.
The viral campaign before virality existed
If you were born before Y2K, you remember the discs. AOL’s marketing campaign flooded America with them: shiny little CDs slipped into magazines, stacked in cardboard towers at electronics stores, stuffed into Sunday newspapers, and mailed, relentlessly, directly to homes. At the peak of the campaign, AOL shipped more than a billion discs in a single year.
They were free. The service was not. But that didn’t matter, because the discs were everywhere. No matter who you were or where you lived, sooner or later an AOL CD landed in your hands. They were so plentiful that people found new uses for them long after the trial code expired. Art teachers snagged them for classroom projects, turning them into mobiles and wind chimes. Crafty mothers repurposed them as coasters or holiday ornaments. Gardeners hung them to scare off birds. For a moment, the AOL disc wasn’t just a gateway to the internet, it was raw material, a shiny little symbol of a new era that infiltrated home offices, classrooms and backyards alike.
That ubiquity was intentional. By flooding the culture with on-ramps to the internet, AOL reframed connectivity as something for everyone. If you could use a CD drive, you could log on. The campaign made access feel easy, universal, even inevitable.
From creatives to cover models
I know because I was there. My creative agency worked with AOL at the height of its influence, designing some of those now-ubiquitous CDs that piled up on kitchen counters across America.
One of our projects featured an image set in Manhattan: a group of people crossing the street in a shot reminiscent of the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover. The twist was that the “cast” wasn’t celebrities but us—agency staffers pressed into service because the budget was tight. Still, the choice of imagery mattered. It placed AOL at the center of modern, urban life, suggesting that this new technology wasn’t abstract or futuristic. It was already part of the culture.
That scrappy detail still sticks with me. Here was one of the most influential companies in the country, with a campaign that relied on ordinary creatives pressed into service for the sake of speed and thrift. History often turns not on icons, but on resourceful people doing their best in the moment.
The great equalizer
AOL’s story shows how much distribution matters in the adoption of technology. By putting CDs in everyone’s mailbox, AOL erased boundaries between urban and rural, rich and poor, young and old. Whether you were a retiree in Nebraska or a student in New York, you got the same invitation to log on.
This is what made AOL such a great equalizer. The CDs democratized access, not by making the internet free, but by making the possibility of connection always available. AOL recognized that scale doesn’t come from exclusivity; it comes from relentless accessibility.
That lesson still applies. When we talk about democratizing technology today, whether AI, mixed reality, or other emerging tools, we often focus on breakthroughs at the top. But history shows that what truly changes the world are the small, persistent invitations that reach the masses.
Into the future
AOL’s walled garden may have eventually faded, its chatrooms became punchlines, and broadband left dial-up behind. But the habits it instilled, with the expectation that you could connect instantly, find community and explore online spaces, has shaped the internet we inhabit today.
The question now is: What are the new AOL CDs? What tools, platforms, or everyday artifacts are quietly introducing millions to tomorrow’s norms of connection?
We often celebrate giants of innovation only in hindsight, once their technologies are entrenched and their impact obvious. But AOL’s story reminds us that change often starts quietly, with something that looks trivial until it rewires the way we live. The AOL CDs weren’t just advertisements. They were passports to the digital age. And they’re a reminder that the artifacts we dismiss today may be the very things that define our future.
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