Green Means Go? The Green Light in and as Media

This article examines the cultural history and analysis of the green light, tracing the design and evolution of green lights from 1868 to the present in relationship to developments in technology, industry, and politics, in order to unpack the ideological implications of the green light over this period of more than 150 years. In so doing, it makes the case for the green light as both a form of media and inherently bound up with inter-mediality, as well as demonstrating that the green light, so often associated with freedom and permission, is in fact a highly ambivalent object at the level of its uses and its interpretations.