“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Rolling, take one. {plastic button clicks, bird sings, ice cream truck drives by playing its jingle} And it’s just starting now.
This is the future, yes, live in the future, now…
The future fair: A fair for all, and no fair to anybody. Yes, it’s free! Join the expectant crowd gathering now as we stop here…
Come closer folks, don’t crowd the wheels. …and don’t be afraid little people, cuz we’re just holy grams. So climb on aboard. We’re going inside…”
From intro to “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus” by The Firesign Theatre 1971
Learning as Journeys
Learning has always been a journey for me. We say we’re “going” to college for a reason. I became a journeyman glassblower pursuing my craft. My favorite learning journeys are road trips. Whether I’m on two wheels or four, riding trains, hitchhiking, or taking the bus, I always come home transformed.
For me, The Firesign Theatre captured the 1960s and Nixon-era spirit I grew up in through their improvisation and teamwork. I first heard them on Los Angeles’s listener-supported FM station, but they had practiced their craft as sports reporters on AM radio and college radio stations. Their early albums are chaotic because they put them together from live performances, which led to comedy albums and live shows. “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus” , the fourth in their improvisational series, is still one of my favorites. I invite you to join me in some serious fun.
Bozo: The Original Media Converger
Before we had theories about transmedia storytelling, Bozo did it. In 1946, Johnny Mercer’s Capitol Records in Hollywood created the world’s first read-along book, ”Bozo at the Circus.” It included a record so children could hear the words while learning to read, with sounds telling them when to turn the page. Apparently, this was the first synchronized content delivery across multiple platforms.
From there, Bozo exploded: more read-along records, phonographs and radios, comic books, toys, radio shows, and in 1949, a TV show on the brand-new KTTV channel 11, Los Angeles’s first TV station. Each platform supported the others. The TV Bozo mentioned the comic book Bozo. The toys looked like the TV Bozo. The records told background stories. Every platform increased every other platform’s value. A capitalist media convergence decades before Henry Jenkins wrote about it.
Then in 1956, Larry Harmon bought the character. Instead of producing one centralized show, he sold franchises. At its peak, 183 local television stations each hired their own Bozo, produced their own show, and created their own local content. Each was authentically local and the concept spread to Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Australia. Each was recognizably Bozo. Bozo was a distributed network before computer networks existed.
As a kid, I only knew the LA TV Bozo, but Bozo is still going strong. David Arquette bought the rights from Larry Harmon Pictures in 2021, performs at events, and produced a new record this year: Send in the Bozos.
Our Distributed Digital Circus
Now we’re driving our own buses—our blogs, and micro-blogging on federated platforms. Some use WordPress, some use Ghost, and there are Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and others emerging with new protocols. The DS106 community at combobulating.net is remixing Reclaim Open from Scotland to LA, Canada to Australia, creating a digital circus where everyone’s contribution has equal access and distribution in the connected network.
Bryan Mathers’ graphics for Reclaim capture this perfectly, and his Remixer tool lets me create my own bus images for the conference. Each participant designs their own bus. You can make your own at https://remixer.
We’re all bozos on these connected buses, where the 183 local clown shows in 1956 foreshadowed infinite connected blogs in 2025, where media convergence meets distributed learning, where your journey matters as much as anyone’s.
We’re all on journeys. And we’re all figuring out these new learning spaces together. The journey metaphor invites everyone’s stories: How did you get here? What detours changed your plans? Share your stories in the comments and with your own favorite media. I’ll be blogging at https://connectingislearning.
As The Firesign Theatre concluded in “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus”; “…the last guy is weird with a beard. {fireworks exploding} Well, the fireworks are over, only the smoke remains…”
