Dewey's cosmic traffic: Politics and pedagogy as communication

Given the appearance and reappearance of notions of transaction, interaction, and communication across his writings, John Dewey can be said to be an important and early contributor to discourses on 'traffic,' both as event and medium. His wideranging and gradually-evolving thought offers an opportunity to see how various issues can be configured in terms of dynamic flow and circulation, including the development of technical media that were profoundly reshaping nearly all aspects of everyday reality in Dewey's time. This chapter traces the trajectory of 'traffic' in Dewey's thought, linking it to developments in 'media theory,' both before and after Dewey, and particularly as it is related to education.