  ........................ radios in cars ........................ doesn't my title sound like the name of a song? or a band? it seems like such a song would begin: "We all have radios in cars. " Anyone up for writing the next line?
.... no, seriously, though. I personally listen to the radio in my car. more specifically? i listen to the news in my car. at various stages of my life, i've listened to music, morning shows, drive-time shows, talk radio -- all on the radio in my car -- but for quite a while, and more time than not -- its the news for me. Which creates an interesting reality, you know. When i'm in the car, that's where I find out about what's happening all over the world (I listen to NPR news -- so there's more international coverage than the media conglomerates offer us).....so even though i'm usually just travelling up and down Cleveland Avenue in Canton Ohio...back and forth from work to home, home to work, I'm thinking about the experiences and realities of people all over the world. Odd, eh? Because on some level I wonder if that doesn't transform Cleveland Avenue in a certain way for me. You know how you can hear a certain song that meant a certain thing for you when you were 16? And when you hear that song, you think of a person or a place or a moment or a feeling? It seems like media provides that kind of contextual frame for our lives in lots of ways. Almost every CD I own has some attachment to the general time period I bought it.
Whenever I play it, I'm suddenly transported to a certain place and a certain time. So what's the impact of listening to the news in my car? Well I'm just thinking that it alters the world that is around me in a way that is discontinuous with the people driving in cars next to me. I'm listening to a story about the dangers of political advertising, but the guy in the truck next to me is listening to Howard Stern and the soccer mom in the minivan that passes me is laughing at Rush.
A car packed with teenagers moves their head in unison as a driving beat organizes Cleveland Avenue for their perceptions. We usually think that reality is an intersubjective place....an experience thats mutually available to me and to the people around me. But global media makes that less and less true. I have more in common as I drive up Cleveland Avenue with someone driving on Lakeshore Boulevard in Chicago and someone else driving on Fifth Street in Manhattan, and someone else driving down Main Street in Peoria, IL -- because we're all listening to the same story...in our cars -- our local worlds rolling by, but being narrated by someone far away -- and being interpreted through the grid work of world news...
But on the other hand, aren't the realities of -- the potholes on Cleveland Avenue, the lane closed up ahead, the new store that just moved into that vacant building -- aren't these realities more binding than the mediated ones? What do you think? Do you listen to your radio in your car? How does it determine who you are? (hmmm....maybe that should be the second line of the song....? peace~ 
