Corporate "mindshare" coming to a school bus for your kids?

Jonathan Rowe has an interesting article on his blog on 06/15/06 regarding the playing of commercials on school buses in Massachusettes. This is another example of the corporate take over of the commons for commerical purposes. Kids are a captive audience being compelled by the state to attend school even against their will and then subjected to corporate messages to manipulate their developing minds and identities.

Here is part of what Jonathan says in his article:

Corporations seek to dominate space. First it was physical space, and now it is mental space – what is called, in marketing argot, “mindshare.” The political Right seeks to cut taxes to shrink the public sphere, or “starve the beast” in Grover Norquist’s phrase. Put the two together and what do you get? You get corporations laying claim to common space, and to the minds of those who occupy it.

The latest example is BusRadio, a company in Massachusetts that is going to install special radio receivers in school buses, so it can fill the airspace in them with ads aimed at kids. School districts starved for funds will get a cut of the ad revenues. BusRadio will get a captive audience of impressionable kids that it can sell to corporate advertisers eager to get inside their minds. The compulsory school laws will become the means to corral these captive kids and deliver them to the sponsors.

If this does become a reality, it might be a reason for thinking parents to homeschool their kids to protect them from the corporate "mindshare".

Link: OnTheCommons.org | A Captive Audience of Kids.