{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Dead Internet Almanac","title":"July 10: Ten Feet from the Web","html":"<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https://share.transistor.fm/e/fcfbdef2\"></iframe>","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":486,"description":"WebTV promised to bring the internet into the living room before the living room was ready for it. Launched into public view in July 1996, the set-top box turned an ordinary television and phone line into a gateway for email, search, shopping, recipes, sports scores, and the messy early web—all controlled from a remote or wireless keyboard. It was an attempt to make the internet feel less like a computer chore and more like a household appliance.\n\nThe idea was humane, ambitious, and almost right. WebTV cared about people intimidated by beige desktop towers, but it also had to force a desktop-shaped web onto a screen built for sitcoms and cable news. Tiny links, cluttered pages, dial-up limits, and analog TV rendering turned browsing from the couch into a strange act of translation, revealing both the charm of the dream and the stubbornness of the web it tried to domesticate.\n\nRead the original article: https://medium.com/@dia_91230/july-10-ten-feet-from-the-web-c230314e9edd\n\nSubscribe to The Dead Internet Almanac: https://buttondown.com/dead-internet-almanac","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/0T0Z9X69zNfYqQ8Z8xV4SB06Vk-a5Z4I4iH6CPQMsiQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yYmJj/OTNlYmM2M2UxYmZl/MDBjZTRiMDlhZTRm/MjI4NC5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}