October 2, 2007 at 14:20:23

Weapons of Mass Instruction

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By Gilbert Cook, Posted by wilba (about the submitter) Page 1 of 3 page(s)

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Weapons of Mass Instruction
The Highway Project

by Gilbert Cook

A majority of Americans favor the impeachment of Dick Cheney.
Nancy Pelosi says that this "... must come from the people."
Dennis Kucinich introduces HR 433
The corporate controlled media avoids the subject.

Close to 75% of our troops in Iraq think we should pull out in 6 months to a year.
Near 25% of our troops in Iraq think we should pull out now.
Congress votes $9 billion new funding and $70 billion "bridge fund".
The corporate controlled media avoids the subject.

A British newspaper reports 1.2 million Iraqui's dead since the start of the war.
The number of Iraqui's displaced from their homes exceeds 4 million since the start of the war.
The corporate controlled media avoids the subject.

But we are not powerless.

If it's "their way or the highway", we'll take the highways.

Twice on every day but Sunday, Americans come together in the mass ritual of The Commute.
Isolated in our cars and preyed upon by corporate radio ads and talk shows, we are immersed in their version of our culture.
Where the total likely progressive population of the Internet is less than 25 million (out of a total number of Internet users of about ~38 million - Wikipedia), the total number in The Commute is far larger. Most of the media news feeding this different audience during these time slots is even more opaque and incomplete than on TV.

Could it be otherwise?
Could we bring information, or the incentive to seek other information, to the large fraction of our society that is in transit every day?
Could we highlight what the media eclipses?

Medium heavy traffic on a 3 lane freeway at typical car-to-car spacing is 6 to 8 cars per second.
We should not be too optimistic...
Maybe 300 cars per minute.
Maybe 18,000 cars per hour.

This means:
with just 200 signs held for only 12 minutes in medium heavy traffic,
we could reach at least 720,000 people from freeway overpasses
with messages that are beyond the control of the media...

"In January 2007, the (Keith Olbermann) show averaged 715,000 viewers per night" (Wikipedia)

The time spent reading text on freeway signs is perhaps 3-4 seconds.

Efficient signs that convey clear information in these time spans could provide a very visible counterbalance (however fleeting) to the average radio talk show content.

Or at least the spark of incentive to find out more.

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