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Everything Bad is Good for You
clampe writes "
In Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson tries to convince the reader that video games, television and the Internet are good for us, despite critics who talk about "vast Wastelands" and "infantilized societies". The book raises interesting questions, but in the end is a lightweight analysis that is better for engendering sound bites on NPR and The Daily Show than for convincing serious readers." Read on for Clampes' review.
Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter
author
Steven Johnson
pages
238
publisher
Riverhead Books
rating
7
reviewer
clampe
ISBN
1-57322-307-7
summary
Popular culture may have a role in making people smarter
In "Everything Bad Is Good For You" Johnson argues that major forms of entertainment like television, video games, films and the Internet have grown increasingly complex over the past several decades, which corresponds to an increase in average IQ scores in the U.S.
The introduction to the book summarizes cultural criticisms about the growing banality of entertainment, focusing mostly on television. Johnson uses this springboard to state his thesis: that popular culture is not only growing more complex, but that the complexity is making consumers of pop culture more intelligent.
The main content of the book is divided into two main parts, with the first arguing that video games, television, the Internet and movies have grown more complex in recent years, and the second part outlining the relationship between those forms of entertainment and increased intelligence.
Johnson claims that the complexity of problem solving and exploration involved in current video games help players learn critical thinking skills. He amusingly asks the readers to consider a world where video games have been around for centuries and a new technology called the book is all the rage. The cultural critics currently bagging on video games would claim books are static, isolating and understimulating. Johnson is the first to admit he's usng hyperbole here, and books obviously have value, but the point is made. Video games, he points out, cannot be directly compared to books in terms of the types of intelligence they encourage. Video games, according to Johnson, are valuable because they force players to make choices, solve problems, keep track of varied situations and in some cases cooperate with others.
Criticizing television is a popular straw man activity for cultural critics. The boob-tube, the idiot box, the vast wasteland. Johnson argues that while the general thinking is TV has gotten worse over the past 30 years, it in fact has become much better. Current shows have more complex narratives, trust viewers to catch subtle references and have denser social networks. Johnson compares "Dragnet" to "Starsky and Hutch" to "Hill Street Blues" to "The Sopranos" to show the evolving complexity of narratives in television dramas. Even reality TV, the easiest target around, is more complex compared to it's historical antecedent, the game show.
The Internet is valuable in three ways according to Johnson: by virtue of being participatory, by forcing users to learn new interfaces and by creating new channels for social interaction. Johnson provides a laundry list of online interactions that bring people together and make them smarter.
Johnson gives a "qualified yes" to the proposition that movies have undergone the same transformation as television. His main evidence is the increase in the number of characters to be found in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy compared to the original "Star Wars" trilogy. The other main evidence is the development of a sub-genre of films he calls "mind-benders" typified by Kaufman works like "Being John Malkovich".
In Part 2 of the book, Johnson associates research that shows American IQ scores have risen over the past several decades (the Flynn Effect) with the increased complexity of popular culture. He looks at alternative explanations for this trend, such as nutrition and education, dismissing each in favor of the popular culture explanation.
The Good:
There is something about people who say they never watch TV that makes me want to punch them. I'm also a little tired of having to explain at dinner parties and family gatherings that my playing video games does not mean I went ahead with the lobotomy. Johnson seems to have tapped into a real feeling that television and games are not the worthless pastimes that popular media decries them as. The book raises interesting and important questions, while providing a tonic against cultural nay-sayers.
As in previous works like Emergence, Johnson has an engaging and approachable writing style. He blends personal experience and decent explanations of the literature to craft his arguments in an engaging manner.
The Bad:
The main problem with this book is the strength of the claims made in Part 2. Human intelligence is a complex mechanism affected by a blend of genetic and environmental factors. It is possible that games and television play a role in positively affecting intelligence, but Johnson has not strongly made that case here. The data he presents, while intriguing, are correlational at best and arbitrary at worst. Johnson is actually careful to qualify the populations he considers to be affected by popular culture, and the kinds of intelligence he is talking about. However, the arguments still hang together on fragile strings of "It could be" and "it's not like because of this".
For example, it could be that his selection of television shows to compare biases his analysis. What Johnson says about the increased complexity of television narratives seems intuitively true, but there's danger in the kind of analysis where shows are plucked with no clear selection mechanism from the past and we draw such sweeping conclusions from them.
There are also several alternative explanations to the trends pointed out in this book. For example, let's assume that there is more worthwhile television than there used to be. However, the real comparison should be between worthwhile television compared over the total amount of television available. Given the explosion of television programming since Starsky and Hutch, it's not surprising that better shows are available. Another explanation might be the maturation of the media. Literature is the gold standard here to some extent, but the novel is an older media form that has had many opportunities to attract good authors than television and video games. Over the centuries that we've had novels, we accumulated some talented authors, and those luminaries attract other talented individuals. Television and video games are a newer media, and consequently haven't accumulated as many giants. Some of Johnson's examples of the new complexity in television and film are really examples of a couple of special individuals, like Aaron Sorkin and Charlie Kaufman, attracted to an increasingly mature art form.
The above counter-examples show some of the dangers of this case based argumentation at the center of this book. By using pseudo-case studies, there isn't really a basis by which the data presented by Johnson is stronger than "because I said so." Work that would help his argument has been done in communication studies, developmental psychology and cognitive psychology, but those fields are largely ignored here. Instead, cranky old guys like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman are set up as straw men. This disconnect reminds of how well Howard Rheingold incorporates current research into popular press efforts like this book. Johnson does use some decent resources like James Paul Gee, and seems to be widely read in several cogent fields, but it doesn't seem reflected as well as might be expected in the actual text.
The sections on the Internet and movies are clumsy and seem almost to be afterthoughts to the other sections. The section on video games is stronger, and the book would have been better by concentrating on that element of the story alone. May not have had as cool a title though.
Final recommendation:
This book is fun, light reading. It's not bad as a catalyst for discussion at parties, but as a serious polemic argument it doesn't hold up. Still, the book is a good airplane read, or something for the hammock. But you're better off playing a video game."
You can purchase Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
In "Everything Bad Is Good For You" Johnson argues that major forms of entertainment like television, video games, films and the Internet have grown increasingly complex over the past several decades, which corresponds to an increase in average IQ scores in the U.S.
The introduction to the book summarizes cultural criticisms about the growing banality of entertainment, focusing mostly on television. Johnson uses this springboard to state his thesis: that popular culture is not only growing more complex, but that the complexity is making consumers of pop culture more intelligent.
The main content of the book is divided into two main parts, with the first arguing that video games, television, the Internet and movies have grown more complex in recent years, and the second part outlining the relationship between those forms of entertainment and increased intelligence.
Johnson claims that the complexity of problem solving and exploration involved in current video games help players learn critical thinking skills. He amusingly asks the readers to consider a world where video games have been around for centuries and a new technology called the book is all the rage. The cultural critics currently bagging on video games would claim books are static, isolating and understimulating. Johnson is the first to admit he's usng hyperbole here, and books obviously have value, but the point is made. Video games, he points out, cannot be directly compared to books in terms of the types of intelligence they encourage. Video games, according to Johnson, are valuable because they force players to make choices, solve problems, keep track of varied situations and in some cases cooperate with others.
Criticizing television is a popular straw man activity for cultural critics. The boob-tube, the idiot box, the vast wasteland. Johnson argues that while the general thinking is TV has gotten worse over the past 30 years, it in fact has become much better. Current shows have more complex narratives, trust viewers to catch subtle references and have denser social networks. Johnson compares "Dragnet" to "Starsky and Hutch" to "Hill Street Blues" to "The Sopranos" to show the evolving complexity of narratives in television dramas. Even reality TV, the easiest target around, is more complex compared to it's historical antecedent, the game show.
The Internet is valuable in three ways according to Johnson: by virtue of being participatory, by forcing users to learn new interfaces and by creating new channels for social interaction. Johnson provides a laundry list of online interactions that bring people together and make them smarter.
Johnson gives a "qualified yes" to the proposition that movies have undergone the same transformation as television. His main evidence is the increase in the number of characters to be found in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy compared to the original "Star Wars" trilogy. The other main evidence is the development of a sub-genre of films he calls "mind-benders" typified by Kaufman works like "Being John Malkovich".
In Part 2 of the book, Johnson associates research that shows American IQ scores have risen over the past several decades (the Flynn Effect) with the increased complexity of popular culture. He looks at alternative explanations for this trend, such as nutrition and education, dismissing each in favor of the popular culture explanation.
The Good:
There is something about people who say they never watch TV that makes me want to punch them. I'm also a little tired of having to explain at dinner parties and family gatherings that my playing video games does not mean I went ahead with the lobotomy. Johnson seems to have tapped into a real feeling that television and games are not the worthless pastimes that popular media decries them as. The book raises interesting and important questions, while providing a tonic against cultural nay-sayers.
As in previous works like Emergence, Johnson has an engaging and approachable writing style. He blends personal experience and decent explanations of the literature to craft his arguments in an engaging manner.
The Bad:
The main problem with this book is the strength of the claims made in Part 2. Human intelligence is a complex mechanism affected by a blend of genetic and environmental factors. It is possible that games and television play a role in positively affecting intelligence, but Johnson has not strongly made that case here. The data he presents, while intriguing, are correlational at best and arbitrary at worst. Johnson is actually careful to qualify the populations he considers to be affected by popular culture, and the kinds of intelligence he is talking about. However, the arguments still hang together on fragile strings of "It could be" and "it's not like because of this".
For example, it could be that his selection of television shows to compare biases his analysis. What Johnson says about the increased complexity of television narratives seems intuitively true, but there's danger in the kind of analysis where shows are plucked with no clear selection mechanism from the past and we draw such sweeping conclusions from them.
There are also several alternative explanations to the trends pointed out in this book. For example, let's assume that there is more worthwhile television than there used to be. However, the real comparison should be between worthwhile television compared over the total amount of television available. Given the explosion of television programming since Starsky and Hutch, it's not surprising that better shows are available. Another explanation might be the maturation of the media. Literature is the gold standard here to some extent, but the novel is an older media form that has had many opportunities to attract good authors than television and video games. Over the centuries that we've had novels, we accumulated some talented authors, and those luminaries attract other talented individuals. Television and video games are a newer media, and consequently haven't accumulated as many giants. Some of Johnson's examples of the new complexity in television and film are really examples of a couple of special individuals, like Aaron Sorkin and Charlie Kaufman, attracted to an increasingly mature art form.
The above counter-examples show some of the dangers of this case based argumentation at the center of this book. By using pseudo-case studies, there isn't really a basis by which the data presented by Johnson is stronger than "because I said so." Work that would help his argument has been done in communication studies, developmental psychology and cognitive psychology, but those fields are largely ignored here. Instead, cranky old guys like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman are set up as straw men. This disconnect reminds of how well Howard Rheingold incorporates current research into popular press efforts like this book. Johnson does use some decent resources like James Paul Gee, and seems to be widely read in several cogent fields, but it doesn't seem reflected as well as might be expected in the actual text.
The sections on the Internet and movies are clumsy and seem almost to be afterthoughts to the other sections. The section on video games is stronger, and the book would have been better by concentrating on that element of the story alone. May not have had as cool a title though.
Final recommendation:
This book is fun, light reading. It's not bad as a catalyst for discussion at parties, but as a serious polemic argument it doesn't hold up. Still, the book is a good airplane read, or something for the hammock. But you're better off playing a video game."
You can purchase Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Is this the same Steven Johnson that wrote this load of crap two years ago?
= navof
i on=morebyuser&m=8603692
http://slate.msn.com/id/2085668/
His argument (and I use that term advisedly) was that when you use Google, really stupid searches (like for "flowers" alone or "steven" alone) get bad results, so good searches must be getting bad results too. To see how badly he got roasted on that article, you can go into their "fray"
http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=webhead&nav
and do a search for articles before 07/17/03 (the day after the article was put on the web) to see the comments of the people around that time. (I'd link the search, but it doesn't seem to let me.)
Now, I know Johnson had a point, and after tons of criticism he eventually put one together, but that hastily thrown-together-argument should have been in the article the first time around. You can see his pitiful attempts to defend this earlier article here, which is the list of his posts on the Fray:
http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=webhead&act
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
don't have time to read article
pls send synopsis, gmail in profile
or IM
k thx
no time to login
i still find Herbert Gans' Popular Culture and High Culture to hold excellent arguments and recommend it for anyone interested in the broad scope of this discussion.
(no referral code in amazon.com link, i promise)
Damn driving at 88mph.
-Its time for some Agent Orange!-
>a lightweight analysis that is better for engendering sound bites on NPR and The Daily Show than for convincing serious readers. ...which makes it perfect for us Slashdotters!
Gotta run... I'm analyzing the 'subtle narrative' of a rubber ball.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
People crapped on pool halls when they first came out. Fact is- they kept kids out of trouble. When there was no TV- kids collected comic books. There is always going to be distractions-- they are just growing to be more complicated.
Turn on television, flip channels, find nothing but crap, turn it off and read a book.
Turn on radio, flip channels, find nothing but crap, turn it off and play my musical instrument.
It's kind of like:
Go to a burger stand, eat burger and shake, get sick, live off soup and water for a week.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Let us start with basic of all knowledgde: language. You can not convince me that youngster are becoming more articulate in their language. In the Netherlands we have this huge language problem: kids are becoming less skillful in language because of the lack using it properly. I think chatting, watching and reading street talks aren't making things more easy.
Let's face it. Benny Hill and Love American Style are poor second choices to House, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Seinfeld. All of the latter require more sophistication from the watcher instead of pure... whatever it was that Love American Style thought was funny.
Consumerism caused by media destroys our ability to reach for any meaningful goals in life. So what if your IQ is a couple of points higher if you spend your life buying cellphones and other worthless crap.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Please allow me to be the first to say that we already have an infantilized society! It is becoming more infantile every day.
Yes, I do mean you, when I say this. You are all just vast wastes of space!
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Six months ago I bought a computer game that has been broken in nearly every sense (fun, speed, function) for $50. A couple of patches have been offered for the game that barely touch the problems, and a patch is going to be offered "real soon now" for at least two months.
The reaction in the gaming forum I visit to see if the patch is finished is absolutely and totally depressing to me. Any suggestion that this is was a ripoff is immediately torn apart by forum members, a couple of which have actually bought brand new computers to try to get their computers to run this game.
So I'm going to go ahead and disagree that critical thinking skills are being enhanced by video games. Every indication I see is that as fun as they are they're like a digital form of huffing glue for "game enthusiasts".
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Okay so suppose television and videogames raise the IQ of people of low or average intelligence. Without tv or videogames there is nothing to replace this kind of 'education', so these people would of gone without the benefit of this mental stimulation.
You would be hard pressed to convince me that if a learned person replaced their intellectual persuits with television their IQ would go up.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
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Those people seem not to understand that the clichedness of bragging about not watching television outweighs any positive impression it makes.
Anyway. Not having read the book, but as I understand it from the review -- it seems perhaps unfair to criticize it for not reaching statistically meaningful conclusions. If the argument it's challenging is "Television is moronic and for morons and that's why everyone nowadays is a moron!", it seems like a reasonable counterargument. And it's not like said argument isn't made routinely.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Does the book hold water. You speak of light reads, and I've read such books where if you don't want to think about it it makes sense. But as you apply the theory it falls apart. Is that what you are bringing up here, or are you saying more that the book doesn't go indepth enough but leaves the reader with a new perspective that is at least decently thought out to the point where if you bring it up, it can't be just torn down in a minute (by a thinking person of course, a zealot will try to tear down even the most obvious truthes in the world)?
It sounds like an interesting read, but I read enough fiction.
sentence....{processing.....processing......proces sing......}
nope...don't get it.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
There is something about people who say they never watch TV that makes me want to punch them.
That's funny, because there is something about people who talk incessantly about The Apprentice and Desperate Housewives that makes me want to punch them. Sorry, but not watching television is as valid a choice as spending your life watching fake people do fake things and getting lobotomized by car ads and "reality" programming.
How is this a "problem?" Kids are changing the language, yet still seem able to communicate sufficiently with each other. Sounds like an optimization to me. Perhaps you meant to add "...and get those dang varmints off mah lawn!" too?
"video games, television and the Internet are good for us".
In the first place, I didn't know videogames (tetris, pacman, Grand Tourismo), Television (Junkyard wars, animal showdown, Wolf's Rain), and the Internet (wikipedia) were bad for us.
And I can't think of ANYONE (except extreme fundamentalists) who thinks that ALL videogames, ALL Television and ALL the internet are bad for us.
...but apparently I'm better off burning my time on increasingly repetitive video games, watching TV (90% of which now consists of watching someone else "live" their "real" life), surfing the Net (where anyone can anonymously express their twisted view on reality and facts, much as I'm doing right now), and engaging in other mind-expanding activities. Lest we forget that as technology grows and expands, the prerequisites for being able to use that technology also grow and expand. TV, the Internet, video games...seems to me all we're learning from these activities are the things we need to know to successfully continue engaging in those activities. How is that not a mind-drain? We don't need these things to expand our social and intellectual boundaries. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a multi-millenia-old institution known as a library that already does that for us, and the only prerequisite for that is the capability to read; and I'm assuming that if you're here, you're capable of that.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
Now, I don't buy into all of this nonesense - but I can certainly see this being used for fodder in the war against video games...
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
Albert Einstein
I tend to agree with this poem:
We are all blind until we see
That in the human plan
Nothing is worth the making
If it does not make the man
Why build these cities glorious
If man unbuilded goes
In vain we build these cities
Unless the builder also grows.
And of course:
"To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."
Theodore Roosevelt
Our society is plagued with menaces, and I highly doubt that will change, except to increase. If it ever does change it will start at home with better parenting and at church (yeah, yeah, don't even start).
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Everything our parents say is good is bad for you. Sun. Milk. Red meat. College.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
somebody mod parent up. the mere fact that he addresses them as "youngsters" indicates that he is likely an old fogey. i bet he drives a buick, too... :)
Language is primarily a functional thing. Things like contractions evolve to make communication more efficient. Although in formal English, contractions are still discouraged today. Just because kids are using netspeak doesn't mean they're any stupider than I am for using contractions in this post. To them it's normal and speeds communication. Language is not a perfect measure of intelligence.
Ah yes, the fabled "increase in average IQ score"... Apparently, we just cracked 100!
However, I predict that a plateau for the foreseeable future.
Its worth it to consider the concepts that Marshall MacLuhan developed concerning Media. His description of media being Hot or Cold is relevant. The television was hot and the print media was cold. Hot media has an inverse affect on our minds - it required less involvement and interraction. Whereas Cold media like a book required our mind to be active... What does this character look like, sound like... our minds are energized. Hot media like tv is "...relax and leave the driving to us..." How this can possibly activate our minds is beyond me.
His main evidence is the increase in the number of characters to be found in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy compared to the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
Wasn't LoTR written a couple of decades before SW?
I agree. Every generation complains about its descendant's poor language skills. This is an example of linguistic evolution, however, the perceived "lower class" languages always evolve at a faster rate than "higher class" language. This is because the "higher class" is always aiming at social mobility, where language is, in effect, inbred, and therefore more resistant to change.
As for the book, it seems like an overly simply argument. You can't just go around denying common sense to make interesting conversation. There must be some thought behind it. The title looks like a grab for sales.
Yes, total TV crap is up by a factor of 50X and the crap-to-quality factor is worse by a factor of 10, but that still means we have 5X the available hours of quality programming compared to 30 years ago.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Spend an hour reviewing the average job applications at any small business, or especially a fast food chain.
It's hard not to lose hope in the future of humanity when faced with such evidence.
I'm half joking, but only half.
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The book raises interesting questions, but in the end is a lightweight analysis that is better for engendering sound bites on NPR and The Daily Show than for convincing serious readers.
Hmm... sound bites on NPR... That's interesting, it sounds like you probably never listen to NPR. The breadth and depth of their coverage far surpasses any other news source I've found. For example On Point is a two hour program, each hour consists of:
They almost always have two or three experts in the relevant field during the discussion segment. Topics are explained and discussed with logic and level-headedness. Most of the time the topics are shown to be complicated with more sides than just the conservative vs. liberal slant you get from other news sources.
In fact I was listening when Morning Edition held a seven minute interview with the author of "Everything Bad is Good for You" back in May. I just googled for it now and it's available to listen to for free on their website: Morning Edition, May 24, 2005: Everything Bad is Good for You.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Cheese and crackers golly, I never thought that could happen, boy gosh! Kids have been getting dumber for thousands of years, thats why there is never any progress. Rest assured your generation is the last generation of worthy human beings. Feel better?
:P
To actually respond to your points, I think more kids have the ability to communicate with more people. When you were a kid did you talk to people at any given time of day? Did you talk to people from other states or even other countries multiple times a week? If your friend went off to the military or a different college, could you still keep in contact with them at anytime regardless of phone# or address?
My point is that it is so easy to communicate now that this "destruction of language" is superficial. The whipper-snappers talk so much they are impatient with articulation and just make their own communication. Amid all this they still pick up "proper" language when the occasion demands. Thats what happens when you are exposed to so much communication, you are capable of even more.
Bedankt, Opa. Het oude mens in Amerika denkt het zelfde
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
OK I hate grammar/spelling Nazis and I *did* note you said "In the Netherlands..." but a post on correct use of language that fails to use the plural of youngster correctly and uses a phrase like "more easy" instead of easier does not deserve to be moderated insightful. There are definitely times when using proper language, to the point of being obsessive about it, are important. A post about proper language is one of these times.
Oh well, good karma was fun while it lasted...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Of course stimulation makes you smarter. Then again, passive stimulation makes you... well... passive. People are made so content going home every day, watching a few hours of TV, playing a few hours of games, surfing the web a bit, that many never do anything productive, ever. Who cares if they're a few IQ points smarter from it? If they're not going to apply it to anything worthwhile, whats the point?
Granted, people haven't always had the time to sit around. Back in the day, the upperclass who had time to sit around would spend it reading, writing, talking, socializing, creating plans for the future of the world, etc. Nowadays, the upperclass is doing the same, but the LOWERCLASS now has tons and tons of free time. Some use this free time to be creative, learn things, travel. Many, many, many, waste away their lives sitting on their couch/computer chair/barcalounger "stimulating" themselves with the "boob toob".
"If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter." -Terry Pratchet, on Popcorn.
Unfortunately the video game industry and the TV industry are hung up on focus groups. The only thing to ever come out of a focus group is bland. All it takes one in-duh-vidiual who has negative responses and is outspoken about them and magically the marketing wonks tell the TV or game produces, "The focus group hated that." In fact, that's not the case. Only one person in the focus group with a forceful personality hated it. The real story is that the rest of the people in the focus group were either too polite or too non-confrontational to deal with the loudmouth.
If you want a baloney sandwich, hire a focus group. If you want a gourmet meal, hire a chef with some flair and vision to create you a masterpiece. Admitted the gourmet meal costs more, but it's also infinitely more satifying. For those who say that the one hour format simply won't support "good TV", I'd like to point out the following, "The Sopranos", "Southpark", "The Dave Chapell Show", "Deadwood", "The Man Show" (original), "Dead Like Me", "Carnivale", and "Rome". The only thing these shows have in common is that they were produced by and air on cable TV channels. They are not beholden to the network executives and their thrice-dammned focus groups.
For those that say that video games are not good entertainment, I would offer up a few of the rather inventive RPG's I've seen lately, "I of the Dragon" and "Fable". I'd also offer the whole "SIM City" series , as well as the "SIMS" and "SIMS2" since they pretty much redefined the "Simulation" category. The direction that some of the MMORG's are going in is becoming interesting because the players have the ability to revamp the world around them as well as interact with the other players, becoming sort of a group consentual hallucination. Given that some of the religious elements have been "forcing" conversions to their faith in on-line games by threatening lower level players with virtual violence, can you imagine what would happen if you got one of those yahoos in a focus group on say, "City of Villans" or GTA?
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
This whole article assumes of course that it's even possible to define or benchmark 'intelligence'.
"Sounds like an optimization to me."
If you mean using the words "shit" and "fuck" to replace every other word then yes, it has been optimized.
and I felt it was an interesting, thought-provoking read but it left me feeling like I'm being manipulated. The book almost reads like a college project or thesis in that is rhetoric and logic is very formulaic and "textbook" in its execution. Set up a hypothesis, mention a negative aspect of idea x, mention several positive aspects of idea x, conclude idea x is overall positive, and move on to idea y.
Overall though he does bring up some interesting points that would be fun to debate with friends over a drink.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
His main evidence is the increase in the number of characters to be found in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy compared to the original "Star Wars" trilogy
Which actually proves nothing since LoTR was written well before Star Wars was even a concept.
Are you not so smart anymore from watching TV? If you want something that holds water get a bucket from Home Depot, or a Nalgene bottle or something. Not a book! But if you really want to replace those lost electrolytes you should drink Gatorade...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Spend an hour reviewing the average job applications at any small business, or especially a fast food chain.
It's hard not to lose hope in the future of humanity when faced with such evidence.
Dumb or dumber? How do you know these kids are not smarter than kids 100 or 1000 years ago? You only have one data point: IQ of today's job applicants.
cpeterso
Fo' shizzle!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Alternatively, look at the case of Master of Orion 3. That game was awful as released, and even the patches didn't help. But the hackers at ataricommunity stepped up and turned it into a game that lived up to most of the promise of the marketing and has only crashed on me once in over 20 hours of play. Believe it or not, the game is actually a lot of fun if you install the InvaderMod and .exe hack, and that's all user-developed. So don't totally write off games as inspiration.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
... In moderation. As for everything if you go out of wack *anything* even what is normaly good for you will be bad for you.... Very bad. Think : Sugar /lipid /protein. Good for you, allow you to live , make up hormons and other good stuff , make up protein. Eat too much of it and you get an host of associated illness... Vitamins are the same. Eat too much vitam C and byebye kidney. Each too much A... TV, Internet, Game and so on are the same. Moderation is the key here.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If I'm not mistaken IQ isn't a measure of education, nor can "the average IQ go up" as the review states.
It is my understanding that IQ is a represenitive comparison of your cognitive skills with the average.
Strictly speeking cognitive ability is independent of education, but practically since we have to test for it you can learn how to answer the questions.
On the other hand I belive the average IQ is defined as 100. If the average person becomes smarter his IQ is still 100.
"knowledgde" of language, eh?
cpeterso
Kids aren't changing the language, but an all-consuming pursuit for validation and individuality lead them to passionately believe that every act of self-expression is far more important than it really is. Slang and poor usage don't evolve the language. 50 years from now, the rules of formal grammar will most likely be identical. Kids will have adopted new slang, a new way to compose sentences so they sound "cool" to their ears, and even then they'll argue that they're helping evolve the language.
yet still seem able to communicate sufficiently with each other
Typical teenage conversation:
"Because, you know, the other day I was at the mall youknow, and I was like, Oh my god look at that girl's dress! Because she was like, you know, really FAT, you know, and all the fat on her was like, you know, showing up everywhere youknow, and I remembered this diet in the magazine, you know, and I was like,..."
Because SUFFICIENTLY is by no means EFFICIENTLY.
Take this to a political forum and you'll see what I mean. The "intelligent posts" usually are the ones you agree with while the uninformed idiots are usually the ones you disagree with.
But that's just human nature.
Personally, I know people who love playing video games who have trouble with basic troubleshooting on that same computer.
If such were the case, wouldn't we see more baseball players with advanced math or physics degrees because they have experience with velocity and curves and such?
Ik ben nog geen 20 jaar oud en het is "de mens" en "hetzelfde".
I blame this on MS Office and really bad teachers. Children today never learn to spell properly or how to use correct grammer because any mistake they make will (at least in part) be corrected automatically by Microsoft Word. If I were a teacher, I would force every assignment to be handed in hand written in ink, double spaced, and I would mark with a standard of correctness which only allowed 1 spelling mistake and 1 gramatical mistake for every 100 words.
Now it is not that I have a problem with spell checking but, much like a calculator, it is a tool that should only be used after someone understands the underlying concepts; in other words spell checking is their to correct typos and ensure that you grammer is correct, it is not there to spell for you and produce grammer for you.
If this article sucks, it is a good read?
I forget where I read this, but one source of our knowledge about the evolution of the Romance languages is the writing of the Roman equivalent of John Simon and William Safire: "Dagnabit, it's equus, not caballus!"
A goodly part of what those "inarticulate" youngsters are saying will turn to fossils, like "groovy," or "23-skidoo," "the bee's knees," or "absquatulate" from still earlier times... but OTOH, part may be the source of what the languages we speak will turn into.
Sorry my communication skills have suffered too much from being a kid. I am only 20 too. ;)
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
You would be hard pressed to convince me that if a learned person replaced their intellectual persuits with television their IQ would go up.
It doesn't have to be all one or the other.
It could be that different learning tools all have diminishing returns, and mixing them is a good strategy. So maybe spending 100% of your learning time reading books is better than spending it watching TV, but mixing them 50/50 is even more effective than reading alone. Or that, say, spending some time going to plays, reading, watching movies, watching tv, playing video games, playing games, going to concerts, etc is better for your intellectual development than just doing a couple of those.
And it could easily be the case that new media have contributed to this intellectual diversity--they may not be the best single way to learn, but adding them to the mix helps out the learned as well as the average.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
I have a nearly 5 year old son that plays video games. One that he used to play (until the wife got nervous about it) was Rayman II. I could see that the games draw was the problem solving elements, it really captured his interest. Plus, the spoken text portions were motivating him to learn how to read - which was, in turn, motivating me to look for computer games that taught reading skills. So, OK, I can see how popular media can be used as a tool to stimulate intellectual development.
Also, I can recall a few years ago reading a study about how children that read a lot of comic books tended to have better reading skills than those that didn't. I believe that, comic books often don't "dumb down" the language. I recall learning a lot of complex words as a child by reading comics. I also understand that a "graphic novel" recently won a Hugo Award ("The Watchers", I think).
On TV, shows like Mythbusters seen to have achieved some popularity. Shows like "The Simpson's" and especially "Futurama" sneak in some pretty sophisticated stuff from time to time as well.
Sadly, TV by and large is still prone to the lowest common denominator. Things like news channels that cycle the same 10-15 minutes worth of stories over and over throughout the day, or so-called "Reality TV" which is really just encouraging the worst in human behavior. In fairness, "Faking It" was cool because it allowed people to explore new experiences and "No Opportunity Wasted" was, in my opinion, the best of the lot, but it didn't make ratings apparently....too bad. Reality TV has gotten so pervasive that there are parodies of it ("Drawn Together", etc.).
So, I guess like everything else, there is good and bad - even in so-called "Reality TV". All the same, the next time someone wants to do "He's a Lady", perhaps we can make it more about what it takes to successfully pull off the role as opposed to simply pandering to gender sterotypes?
Enough pontificating...in the end, I suppose it's how you use the medium/art form that ultimately matters.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Back when you had to outwit a potato before you could eat it. Back when you had to be smarter than the tigers and lions trying to eat you.
Now, I'm supposed to be happy that a kid who can't out-fight an irregular verb on a job application is "smarter" than a kid 20 years ago? Well, at least he can tell me the cheat codes for the coolest games.
Come back to complain when your netherlandish is good enough to get his point across.
I don't know about you, but to me thet habitual use of "like" and "ya know" do not project much in the way of intelligence, confidence, or professionalism. In fact, I submit that there is an inverse relationship between the number of times you say "like" or "ya know" during a job interview, and the likelihood of getting hired. As far as the rest of the MTV pop culture-inspired "enhancements" to our language, ten years from now most of these kids will look back and laugh at how dumb they sounded. The rest will still be talking like that, living off of social programs.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
I read this book while vacationing in the woods outside of Yosemite. Pretty fitting place to read it, actually. I posted a review to my blog (shameless pimpin') and was pretty shocked when Steven Johnson himself (or a poser, I suppose) posted a complimentary comment. Gotta love the web.
Anyway, I thought his point about gaming being brain candy, and the stimulating complexity of modern TV programming were well done -- and a welcome antidote to CW. But he gets way ahead of himself on a lot of points. And he skims blithely past a lot of important elements of modern culture.
As he said, as a cultural critic, he gets to do that. The hard work of researching and analyzing the points he makes is left to academics and other experts. Which is good, because it allows him to put his ideas into a nice, light, provocative, fun little book.
The only downside comes when you start putting education and work after games. Trust me, I'm a perfect example! *turns on PS2*
It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin
I think I'd have less faith in humanity if articulate, educated folks were filling out job applications for fast food chains.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
No. "The Lord of the Rings" is complex because it was a trilogy of books first. Almost 2000 pages of complexity, compared to the flimsy "she's your sister Luke" of Star Wars. Blech. Star Wars by comparison is like the O.C. in space, give me a break.
And if "Being John Malkovich" is in a sub-genre of films called mind-benders, you would have to be very ignorant of the history of movies not to at least in part attribute the history of the genre to Hitchcock.
Did he ever mention that the shows of today which are more complex, were made by people who grew up with less "complex" shows in their time?
Perhaps they seem less like masters of the language, but at least today's kids are capable of reading and writing. Illiteracy was generally accepted 100 years ago, and still somewhat common 50 years ago. Of course, I'm not trying to say we have squashed it completely, but the situation has improved.
- the Hun
I'm a Tasty-vore. If it's Tasty, I'll eat it.
This reminds me of Woody Allen's 1973 movie "Sleeper", in which he plays a character who wakes up from a deep cryonics sleep and finds himself in a futuristic society in which "everything that used to be considered bad for health, such as smoking and eating red meat, is now considered good for you."
I'm sure the author of "Everything Bad Is Good for You" is serious, but I think the correct way to approach this book is with a sense of humor. Before video games, people played chess for brain exercise; before TV, there was a thing called "reading books"; before Internet, one went to a place called "library".
The "increasing IQ" claim is suspicious -- Einstein never played "Doom", never watched "Sopranos", never surfed online, but we can all agree that 50 years after his death we have yet to find anyone smarter.
Sun and Fun
The rules for using apostrophes in English are simple. Why not learn them?
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
A burger-flipper (etc) doesn't need to converse with their manager as much as the customers on a daily basis. "like" and "ya know" aren't professional for *the manager* -- but they probably click quite effectively with the customers (who are proportionately around the same age)
For a more in-depth view of this problem as taken from a linguistic standpoint, check out Science and Sanity, by Alfred Korzybski.
Unfortunately, being intelligent about completely useless topics is still completely useless. So some teenage girl spends age 13 through age 19 reading every issue of Elle, Cosmo, People, US Weekly (that's "US" weekly, not "U.S." weekly ... I know, it sounds like a legitimate magazine but it is just a celeb-stalking magazine), etc ... what good does it do her? Sure, she's developed her ability to collect and retain oodles of information, but right now her resources are all filled up with useless crap about what celeb is dating what other celeb and the latest fall fashions.
... Anything ... Just give them a chance. Right now they are being doomed to a life of pop culture, consumerism, and thoughtless dribble.
And who's not to say that her ability to collect and retain information is not catered to these useless data types (ie, the data type of "fall fashions"). Just because she can retain tons of information about fall fashions does not mean she can understand field lines for differential equations.
This topic ticks me off in particular because I have some young girl cousins (13, 14) and their families do nothing but feed them this useless crap. Instead of getting them a subscription to Popular Science or something (maybe even the for kids version), they shower them with Elle and Cosmo Girl. Then they reinforce the whole idea of turning themselves into objects for the boys to chase around by giving them makeup kits, little pink purses, high-cut baby tees, and accessories covered in bling. I try to talk to them about basic science and math, but they just go "huh, really?" and move on to something else. It's depressing because most of their families are non-technical types, and basically they (mainly their female relatives) are playing 'doll dress-up' with their younger siblings/kids/cousins/nieces. This wouldn't be as bad if they would reinforce some intelligent topics as well, even if it were just generic earth science or basic astronomy. Take them on some nature hikes and point out the different types of trees, look at specific plant structures and try to think how each unique plant has adapted to its environment. Take them out into some rural area in the middle of the night and take a gander at the stars. Show them how our solar system is constructed. Look at a globe and point out interesting geographical points on Earth
150 years ago, practically every city-dwelling 14-year-old in the U.S. was obliged to read and understand literature that is beyond today's typical college graduate. What changed? Plenty. It's impossible to say how much degradation should be attributed to generations of pervasive lead poisoning, how much to the deliberate demolition of the successful educational system of the time, how much to the more complex physical culture, and how much to better communication technology.
Pervasive lead poisoning is only now in decline; most Americans still live in lead-painted houses. Unleaded fuel doesn't just make oil, and engines, last many times longer. We should expect continued dramatic improvement on that basis alone.
The replacement of education with an indoctrination system, derived from India's method for keeping its lower castes in line, is one of the great crimes of the last century. Hallmarks of this system include segregation by age, sudden, arbitrary abandonment of activities, pervasive surveillance, petty authority, and enforced meaningless group exercises. (It was installed in the decades after the red scares of 1848 to make any repetition literally unthinkable.) Only in the last decade or two has there been any motion away from this goal, and most people still think of all these oppressive techniques as normal.
One miniseries I watched not too long ago that absolutely excellent was HBO's Deadwood.
It makes me wonder if one of the reasons that movies are perceived to be not as good these days is that TV is making it look it bad.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Well, the author talks about the Flynn effect, which he then dismisses as cultural. I think it is in fact a combination of things, one of which is a general increase of knowledge over time.
Think about this. I was teaching a science class recently when I remarked how strange it is to be learning about something with my students, which a only two generations ago was the province of Nobel Prize winners. There is certainly an increase in general knowledge.
Does that mean the kids are smarter? Hmm. I'm going to hedge on that. The research seems to say yes, but I notice disturbing trends.
What I can say, about your language example, is that you may have failed to consider something. You seem to believe that speaking properly is some measure of intelligence. Consider that grammar is not always how communication flows naturally. It is artificial in many cases, and may not be the most efficient way to interact. Some patterns are built in, apparently, but most of what you were taught in school was not consistent with how you would speak if you were concerned with only communicating what was necessary.
Now consider that you're a kid these days, with 8 different things going on, and buttons popping up, tones going off, etc. Even if you could adhere to proper language skills, why would you want to, when the point can be made in 1/4th the time?
Language is a measure of your ability to adhere to a set of rules. To commit them to memeory, and recognize when one of the rules is broken. It is not intelligence.
Why does everyone blame spellcheckers? If anything, they have improved my spelling. In the past I wouldn't bother looking up words like occur and probably would have spelled it 'occurr.' Now I can quickly check it on google, or watch MS Word correct it and learn how it's really spelled. The english language is full of words that are not spelled how they sound or have double letters in unexpected places. If I need to write a word more than once a year, I'll quickly learn how it is spelled when a spellchecker corrects it. Maybe I'm just lazy, but when I write dozens of emails a day I don't have time to look up every awkward word in the dictionary.
- the Hun
I'm a Tasty-vore. If it's Tasty, I'll eat it.
The bit after the ellipsis should say "and how much of recent improvement to ..."
Damn, I wish I could drink again. :(
Family Guy quote:
Stewie (to Jeremy, the babysitter's boyfriend):
Ha! I got your hat! Take that, hatless! Now go back to the quad and resume your hackey sac tourney! I'm not gonna lay down for some frat boy bastard with his damn Teva sandals and his Skoal Bandits and his Abercrombie and Fitch long sleeved, open stitched, crew neck Henley smoking his sticky buds out of a soda can while watching his favorite downloaded Simpsons episodes every night! Yes, we all love "Mr. Plow"! Oh, you've got the song memorized, do you? SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE! That is exactly the kind of idiot you see at Taco Bell at 1 in the morning! The guy who just whiffed his way down the bar skank ladder!
I Love Lucy quote:
Lucy Ricardo: I want the names to be unique and euphonious.
Ricky Ricardo: Okay. Unique if it's a boy, and Euphonious if it's a girl.
yeah, that's a somewhat higher degree of sophistication, I'd say. no matter which joke you like more.
both quotes taken from less than 15 seconds searching on google, and I doubt I love lucy was the high of comedy, it's just all that came to the top of my mind first, as old comedy shows go.
p.s. if you didn't understand the second joke, you might be old, but it doesn't make you sophisticated to not understand the references.
I take your point, but "articulate" is a very vague idea. Perhaps they are not "articulate" in the sense that they use styles of language or vocabulary to which some other group or generation is accustomed. However, there is a lot of complexity and fast evolution in "web speak". In many ways, prior generations are "inarticulate" to new generations, with outdated catch phrases and slogans.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Did you know the original title was "War: What Is It Good For?", but Tolstoy's mistress convinced him to name it "War and Peace".
I disagree that "sufficiently" is equivalent to "well".
Most college-age people that I know communicate awkwardly, at best, or ineffectively, at worst, when in any setting outside of casual social conversation. The casual conversation may indeed be simplified, but at the expense of precise and concise language use elsewhere.
Also, this language problem has a huge impact on academic performance. Test taking is always dependent on a clear understanding of the question, often more than understanding the material itself [1]. Sometimes foreign students, in my opinion, place too much emphasis on studying very hard, rather than learning the Engligh language well enough to make studying much easier.
[1] In Physics, I had a quiz every week. Since the class was at 8am, often I would not attend class at all before the next quiz. I would stare at the quiz, wondering "what does that symbol mean?" and then eventually deduce the meaning from the given formulas and the question wording. Not only did I learn a lot from those quizzes, but those were generally my highest quiz grades. Once I even deduced a constant because it was used in several questions, and the questions were multiple choice. I just used my calculator, worked backwards, and found the only value of the constant that would consistently answer all the questions from that available answer options.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
"het mens" is een correcte, zij het ouderwetse, aanduiding voor een onvriendelijke oude vrouw.
So, you are saying that the formal grammar of today is the same as that of Churchill? There are several classes of new gramatical constructs that are in use today. Perhaps not in scientific papers, but in the vast majority of written communication, the language has most definitely evolved. For a good (and humorous!) look at some of the new classes of words in use, I recommend this short essay, which is a amature linguist's view on modern slang. The biggest drive for language today that I see is the need to communicate larger and larger volumes of information more quickly. The use of acronyms and abbreviations shorten the language. Unforunately, most of our brains haven't yet caught up with our newfound ability to say so much so quickly, so occasionally a pause is required. This is where the "APMs" that our friend was talking about come into play -- a person may say "like", or "um", or any number of other things to fill the gaps while his or her brain turns over the next thought.
A number of people decry language no longer being an 'artform', something to be molded for great beauty. There will always be the wordsmiths who produce language akin to art. But since language is no longer a province of the elite, since (in the first world) the people are finally participiating in matters of import, the language will evolve for utility, and not beauty. I, for one, am fine with that.
Family Guy is low-brow humor and doesn't even pretend to be anything else but.
On the other hand, even "low-brow" has its flashes of brilliance. For example, I recall an episode of "King of the Hill" that gave a pretty intellegent treatment of sexual harassment. I even suggested it to our HR department.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
He kinda has a point with plots getting more sophisticated. Just look at the plot and writing of the current Battlestar Galactica compared to the original, the difference in quality is like between night and day. That said, there are plenty of classic movies that stand the test of time very well, although film is a different medium.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I've just finished reading 'God Emperor of Dune'.
Leto makes an interesting point. Well heaps of them but one that stands out here. To paraphrase a little...
Technology increases the number of things that you can do without getting your conscience involved.
This is a bad thing.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Did you go to UW ??
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
I don't have data for the population as a whole, but the radio show Prairie Home Companion does provide this one data point, which, over the years I've listened, has been constant. I'll leave it to the experts to determine statistical significance.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
In other news, global warming has caused temperatures to soar into the 200's, which naturally means that humans grew a thick leathery hide to protect against burning, and all the crops have died, corresponding to human's recently developed ability to live without eating.
"Surprisingly, I thought kids are becoming dumber"
There's a tense problem there... "Surprisingly, I thought kids WERE becoming dumber" or "surprisingly, I THINK kids are becoming dumber" are both grammatically valid, but your subject line wasn't.
Shinma
How did you obtain your 1.21 gigawatts!
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
There is a difference between using a spelling and grammer checker to correct your spelling and grammer and being entirely dependant on a spelling and grammer checker. There is a fundamental difference between the words 'There','They're' and 'Their' but ask the average highschool (or college) graduate to explain it to you and you'd be shocked by the results.
There is no reason that a society that spends so much on education can have such poor results (I'm talking specifically about Canada); a large portion of high-school graduates are functionally illiterate, and even more of them have problems doing very basic arithmetic. During University I talked to a couple of my professors about this and they always mentioned that they noticed a steady drop in the abilities of First year students every year; the start of this steady decline was about 10 years ago, about the same time that students were expected to have a calculator for high-school math classes and at a point where Personal Computers were in most homes. Is this just a coincidence?
Einstein never played "Doom", never watched "Sopranos", never surfed online, but we can all agree that 50 years after his death we have yet to find anyone smarter.
Actually, no we can't. There's a long standing debate among physicists on whether Einstein was a genius or whether he merely took the next logical step.
In addition, in the modern era we have many physicists as intelligent as Einstein, they just aren't being used as wartime propaganda.
Clear, Dark Skies
When we are half joking we are the most serious.
PhantomCow.com
After reading the link I must say that I have not met one single person with above average intelligence who talks this way. California is not the whole world.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Really? People who apply for jobs at fast food chains don't have a perfect grasp of formal english but instead speak a more vulgar tongue? Pish Posh, I say. Civilization is coming to an end!
Sorry, but their job is to flip burgers and punch orders into a cash register. That doesn't take the same skills required to craft a master work of literature. And I'd like to see your average English major last more than a week on a construction job without doing something incredibly dangerous because they didn't know it was dangerous. Different skill sets for different jobs. It's called division of labor.
I see that Slashdot is cleaing its inbox out and linking to reviews of a book published months ago.
Is a reveiw of the Atkins diet coming soon?
Nietzsche must be having a heyday!
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
Yes, your obsoletely write! Spill chokers salve aviary thing!
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I haven't read the book, but it sounds like yet another book for lazy, dumb people to pick up because it justifies their meager existence of spending hours a day in front of a television. I probably sound like a troll, but I don't own a tv, and his book sounds like he's trolling against my existence, so I figured I'd reverse it.
You can not convince me that youngster are becoming more articulate in their language.
(sacrasm ON) Well, like, clearly, there are, you know, some problems with the language of youth, like communicating their ideas and stuff? (sarcasm OFF)
Seriously, I think that young people have a need to have a more diverse language skill set than most "adults" need to, and therefore don't have the time or ability to master the one or two language skill sets you're looking at.
For example, a young person may have to be familiar or fluent in Instant/Text messaging (and the complicated rules around that written form), the academic writing they do for school, and the "literature" that they read (slang and such things that are pop-culture driven). That's not counting the different spoken styles between friends, parents/authority figures, people in the neighborhood, people at work, etc. I think as you get older, those diverse backgrounds merge a little closer, and more frequently used (academic and work language are perhaps what you're focusing on) become your dominant mode of communication.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
occur
I understand what you mean, being from the UK, I used to automatically spell it occour as in colour, favour, vapour etc. and would get annoyed at my spellchecker for changeing it because I thought it was changing it to the american spelling, even though I'd set it to british english. I looked it up and found i was wrong.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
"In case you hadn't realized, it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?"
See here and think "totally like, whatever! okay? ya know, like, for sure!" while reading this...
http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=21
The synopsis is pretty idiotic... there is a lot of cherry picking of the best content available (Sopranos for TV, Kaufman films for movies, etc) which probably are not all that representative of pop culture as a whole. The mainstream of movies nowadays is Spiderman - not Adaptation. Sopranos? More like Everybody Loves Raymond and American Idol...
Johnson gives a "qualified yes" to the proposition that movies have undergone the same transformation as television. His main evidence is the increase in the number of characters to be found in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy compared to the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
But Lord of the Rings is a book written long before Star Wars... he should have picked an action film created fully in the modern era. Something like Spiderman or Doom... but, of course, that would defeat his thesis (i.e. they have far less characters than Star Wars).
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
Are those hacks availalbe for the OSX version?
"...rules of formal grammar..."
That's your problem right there. There are no rules of formal grammar. We don't have and English Language Authority like the French do. what is called 'standard' or 'formal' or 'proper' grammar is simply dialects of the educated class in large cities, such as London, Melbourne, New York and Chicago. It's the same 'street talk' that your kids are making up as they go along, expect it happens in the halls of academia, and the editing rooms of newspapers.
At best it's simply one educated ethnic group claiming that their dialect isn't really a dialect at all, but the best, most pure form of English. At worst, it's used to make fun of people who speak other dialects, such as Appalacians, Manhattenites, American blacks, Southerners, etc. by claiming someone who doesn't speak your dialect is stupid.
I would suggest you check out the Stephen Pinker's seminal _The Language Instinct_. In it, he describes how all slang follows incredibly complex grammatical rules. Here's a gem: How do you know that 'Abso-fucking-lutely' is correct, whereas 'Ab-fucking-solutely' isn't? In fact, slang is just a derogatory term for the language of other generations and ethnic groups.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I've found I get more electrolysis from grabbing two wires in a bucket.
Just because something SEEMS to be true by thought, doesn't make it so. "Is the world round We've been told enough times that we believe it's a sphere. But if tommorow proof came out that it's a complex shape, or a mobius strip (yes it too is a complex shape) I can ask myself this.
Besides which one big problem is that I can say that games help me, but I have no proof from this, I can say watching TV doesn't hurt me, but do you have actual proof you're not a little less intellegent then you were as a child.
I'm just asking if it's a sound theory, if it doesn't have any pretty obvious flaw (such as saying global warming is happening when not considering alternative theories, or what might happen with out such ecological phenomonia.) Or as a related issue, calling the Current rash of Hurricanes "global warming" when you realize it only applys in that they are chaotic weather phenomena and Global warming will also cause chaotic weather phenomena. Yet these theories are both herald as absolute fact by some people. It doesn't make them invalid, but it doesn't mean they are absolute fact, more like science fiction with potential application.
sorry to break the surprise but this news story / book / etc is at least 4 months old. why is it being announced now as new?
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/
Mandatory reference
...more complex ? Certainly not. Good guy Cruise saves planet from bad guy Martians...so whats new ?
Please study the list for atleast 10 full minutes ( assuming pop culture hasn't numbed your attention span:) and its clear movies haven't grown complex, not by a long shot.
Take the top 10 in that list. Other than LOTR & maybe starwars, the rest are straightforward good-vs-evil narratives.
Ok, take the top 25. You have memento & usual suspects...both are an example more of puzzle/trickery than true complexity.
Take the top 50...you now add Matrix & Eternal Sunshine...two examples of, forgive me, pretentious complexity as opposed to being genuinely complex.
On to the top 100...
I'd wager that truly complex films won't do well on the box office.
Simpler motifs are more compelling.
Why ?
Because narratives mirror human life.
Human life is primarily about
1.ambition
2.rejection
3.acceptance
4.mortality
You can play combinatorics with above 4 plotpoints to get finite set of 3-acts & those would translate to premises. You then construct characters to advocate said premises, such characters would then lead to conflict,lo & behold...drama!
Ingredients have always been the same Pemise->Character->Conflict.
For a forceful primer on why this is so, study Lajos Egri, for example.
Film has a roughly 106 year old history at this point. We're still dealing with the same stock naratives, and a 106 years later, unless the species have evolved to some higher ethereal plane, we'll deal with the same narratives.
Ofcourse Joe becomes Neo to keep up with pop culture...thats as far as complexity goes.
What has changed is the phenomenal growth of meta.
50 years ago, you forgot about the outside world & watch a flick & walk out mesmerized by the characters & the narrative. Now, nobody cares about the characters as much as which star is playing the character, whom he's sleeping with, whats the size of his paycheck, where's the film's blog, what did the director say on Jon Stewart's show, hey did you see the trailer on Charlie Rose, did you hear that joke on Jay Leno, Larry King,...so much meta-info.
Gimme the first & last name of the character played by Tom Cruise in Speilberg's WOTW ?
Who cares ? It was a Tom Cruise flick, made for the studio average of $120+ million, probably made twice as much on the box, had cool cgi,
Breakfast served all day!
Yes, the average IQ is 100. But the scale has been moved up several times. What would have scored you a 100 20 years back would probably only get you a 90-95 now. This means one of three things: Children are smarter now than they were back then, IQ tests do not actually test IQ, or that the basic premise behind IQ itself is false, and that some component of intelligence is environmentally based and it would therefore be impossible to create a test that objectively tests intelligence. Or some combination of the three.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
All modern 'proper' languages were at one point varients of more ancient languages, and were probably thought of as improper by the generation before. Maybe its that these youngsters are becoming more adept at this particular varient of their native language, and its the older generation that is failing to keep up with the evolving nature of their language and speech. If you are talking about etiquette, then it is always thought of as 'proper' to speak in a manner which is respectfully in the style of the older, more traditional language for the older people who may be present. I think your problem might be more of issue of etiquette, than of young people being less skillful in language.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -Hunter S. Thompson
Your first two sentences were very concise and made a good point. The rest was kinda a tangent :)
Touche. I doth been riposted.
I actually find that young people have different language skills, but not necessarily better or worse. For example, the speed at which the modern youth culture introduces new words into the lexicon is staggering to me. It's hard for me to keep up, and I'm only in my mid-30s. Think of recent words like "bling", "down-low" or "metrosexual". While you may think these words are stupid, they do bring new connotations that no existing words really had.
Young people also employ a form of short-hand when using IM and the like, only some of which I am familiar. On the other hand, I think there's been a reduction in formal written language skills over the past few decades. And as another poster pointed out, they are probably less organized in their thoughts as a result (or perhaps as a cause).
As far as total knowledge and intelligence of today's youth as compared to any other time period, that's probably difficult to guage. I suspect that living in a modern technological society requires more knowledge, just to keep up with everything. But as pointed out in Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel", hunter-gatherers know an awful lot about the natural environment they live in -- including almost all uses (food, medicial, tool) for all the plants and other things they encounter. In some ways, it seems that perhaps an average person's knowledge (at a given age) is constant; it's just *what* they know that changes over the generations.
The only thing I'm pretty certain of is that the schools have been failing to teach our children critical thinking skills as well as they should. And relative to other countries, our education system is falling behind. Especially when we start putting politics and religion ahead of science.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
the day that someone explains to me how they learned vector calculus by watching the tube.
In Community College, when I was studying to be an Electronics Technician, we had to take two full classes of Physics. Normally I wouldn't care, but I had a lot of more important things to do. Plus the textbook cost a week's wages. Plus, nothing in the physics classes had any direct relevance to electronics. Plus, I was too old to give a shit about a required class in background peripheral subjects.
So, at the last class there was a final exam, and for the first time in my life I was confronted with a test in which I didn't know one single correct answer.
Fortunately, I was able to use logical comparative analysis to pass the test. I compared the answer of the person on the left of me with the answer of the person on the right of me. If they were the same, then that was my answer too. If different, I took the answer of the person who looked smarter (nerdier in a Physics class perspective).
I have no shame about doing this. I signed up to become an Electronics Technician, not a Physics student.
I recommend this to anyone in school. Learn everything possible about your field: cheat on everything else. Whenever possible, use technology to give yourself proficency in areas that you chose not to learn. I'm talking spell checkers here, guys, for the present. In the future, learn to trust and use machine language translators. Unfortunately there is no spell checker on this Windows computer that I am currently using in the library. Why not?
Please, from what he says in the movie it's clearly jiggawatts, an otherwise unused but very funky measure of power.
"With rare exceptions people cannot use that picture to masturbate, therefore it is not the internet."
There are no rules of formal grammar. We don't have and English Language Authority like the French do. what is called 'standard' or 'formal' or 'proper' grammar is simply dialects of the educated class in large cities, such as London, Melbourne, New York and Chicago.
Precisely. Those *are* the rules of formal grammar! Formal grammar is the way one speaks or writes if one wants to be taken seriously by those with power. It has always been so.
Using formal style for pursuasive communication is like wearing a suit to a job interview - it may have nothing to do with the matter at hand, but it shows that you understand the rules of the game, and demonstrates your competence in playing. By showing you can understand an follow the intricate rules of formal grammar, you demonstrate (a) that you're smarty enough to do so and (b) that you understand the rules that matter.
Of course, in some contexts, slang and a tongue piercing is more effective, but those aren't usually the crowds with much power.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That's not new. In fact, if anything it was worse before spell checkers and correcting typewriters. My dad spent 30 years in Human Resources, and in his opinion the general quality of resumes hasn't changed in that amount of time. (Of course, he worked at a hospital, not as a fast food restaurant.)
Comment of the year
Johnson claims that the complexity of problem solving and exploration involved in current video games help players learn critical thinking skills.
Except that you can't go to gamefaqs.com to find a walkthrough for real life.
I wonder what percentage of casual and hardcore gamers regularly use online walkthroughs to get through a game...
Eye halve a spelling chequer. It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word and weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write. It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid. It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite. Its rarely ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it. I am shore your pleased two no.
Its letter perfect in it's weight. My chequer tolled me sew.
Sauce Unknown
(Reader's Digest.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
in all honesty...yes. Fuck and shit are a collection of letters that we have decided to give a certain meaning and pronunciation in this culture. In most cases the only reason these words have become "bad" is because they where derived from lower class dialects. But their meaning is arbitrary. We can, and do, change there meanings all the time. This is one of the problems that face American perceptions of hip-hop, as words like bitch, shit, fuck and nigga simply DO NOT MEAN THE SAME THING in poor black American culture. And in the construction of a well made rap, there is constant, very intentional play with what the meaning of a word and structure of sentences. Believe or not, but those that really know hiphop know it's about subverting language. Its not unlike the new musical vocabulary jazz created, another poor black American musical form that was initially decried as primitive, crude and unintelligible. Combine that with the new language of culture where everyone saw that one episode of family guy, and the very idea of how we use language can be challenged. I think soon people on a mass level will understand that a word is only misspelled if they decide it is. Or that me judging another person's speach as "not proper" or "inarticulate" is just another way of saying that I am ignorance of an entirely different way of comunicating...that I NEED TO LEARN FROM OTHERS. I what i find interesting is that, for the most part, these ideas are seem lost on older generations. And like orwell told us so many years back, those that control language control society. So for fucking sake, yall, question some shit. 4 serious, yo. Holla@yaboi. 1
In Lake Woebegone, Minnesota, all the children are above average. This would suggest that a good portion of the adults are below average. If that has been the case for a statistically significant period of time, we can conclude that the population is getting smarter.
Or is could suggest that people see their IQ drop as they age, or ann ongoing demographic shift, or many other things. Now if the call hildren understood the difference between correlation and causation, I'd be impressed!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Hmm...the spoken version is better (seems like the web version has been edited for politically correctness or someething...how disappointing!) So here is my best attempt to translate the spoken version of Taylor Mali's "Totally like whatever"
In case you hadn't realized, it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about? You know?
Or believe strongly in what you're, you know, saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s and (you know what I'm saying?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the end of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, you know, questions?
Declarative sentences - so called - because they used to, like, you know,
DECLARE things to be true, okay, as opposed to other things that are like totally, you know, NOT -
have been infected by this tragically cool and totally hip interrogative tone? You know?
As if I'm saying don't think I'm a nerd just because I've liked noticed this, okay? You know?
This is just like what I've heard, I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions,
I'm just like inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty?
What has happened to our conviction? Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down with the rest of the rain forest? You know?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society just become so filled with these, like, conflicting feelings of nah nah nah
That we've just gotten to the point where were just, like, totally you know, whatever!
And actually our disarticulation...ness is just a clever sort of a...sort of a...thing
To disguise the fact that we've become the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since...
You know, a long time ago!
I implore you, I entreat you, and I challenge you: to speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you belive
it because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it is not enough these days to simply question authority.
You have to speak with it, too.
From what I gather, what is being said is that over all, learning from different types of media is increasing and making people smarter. I believe this to be true, not on the surface but within an underlying context.
Books have been written and used basically that same way from the time books were first printed.
Yes they stimulate the mind, but the technology to produce the books is the only thing changed over time. A book written now is quite the same as a book written 100 years ago. Subject matter has changed to keep up with the times though.
TV has matured over time and the way information is presented has changed. TV is a way to continue to gather information while relaxing and no, not all shows are geared to learning.
The shows that are geared toward teaching can do a better job than in the past.
Internet is still realitivly new, but many enjoy it. The way to write web pages has changed and matured over the short time its been around. Kids seem to learn this stuff a lot faster than the parents or the older crowd per say. They understand this technology and grow from it in many ways, but they still need to be monitored for safety sake.
Not all video games are geared to learning. Some games are out there just for the fun of playing, while others are fun to play still have learning componets built in. Componets such as logic problems and team play. Another aspect is also the fact that since these games are desired by people, there is also an interest in developing these games which a lot of gamers start to learn programming in order to create new games. Games get the interest of the people which leads to learning to create. Old tech gives way to new tech and new ideas.
Still people need to get out and get exercise. None of the above help in making a person physically fit, only the actions of people get out and doing something does. Reading a book, watching TV, surfing the net, or playing video games won't help keep a person physically fit.
Oh no, not City of Villains! That game is so evil, did you know that you can rescue "chumps" in order to gain favor with the eeeevil Lord Recluse?
Don't forget all the nefarious plans that you can foil. To, you know, gain favor.
Seriously. The game should really be called City of Heroes with Scary Costumes. The only remotely evil thing I've seen that you can do is rob banks. And even then, you don't kick around innocent people, you have to fight your way through hordes of corrupt Rogue Island police officers. In fact, the innocent people push YOU around, and you can't even hit them back.
Perhaps the fault with that observation is you have a very small sample space. I attend a top 20 university, and such speech is certainly not uncommon among those who attend here, even those with excellent grades and hard schedules. Nor does Vanderbilt draw upon a large "Valley Girl" population, with a geographically diverse set of attendees. Here, as with most college students that I personally know, the focus on communication is efficiency, not obeying some unfortunate set of rules spawned more by history then clarity. The few professors remaining who focus more on grammatical correctness then on the strength of a student's arguments find themselves with lighter schedules.
My original assertion, though, remains valid. The language of my grandmother (who was a teen in the '30s) is quite different from even the language of my mother (a teen in the '70s), and it certainly bears even less in common with the language of my generation (teens in the '90s). That social pressure evolves the language we all speak is a view with plenty of historical precedent. Have you attempted to read Beowulf in the original Old English recently? If this evolution is understood and accepted, why should we cast doubt on the notion that language would evolve at a much more rapid pace today, as the rate of technological and social change is many times greater then that of the dark ages? Those who resist these changes are often stereotyped as conservatives, and I will shamelessly do the same here: isn't the conservative ideal a laissez-faire free market? If so, why should the evolution of language not be subjected to an intellectual market -- those ideas that survive will obviously have merit, and the contraposition must also hold: those ideas without merit will surely not survive.
Didn't Friedrich Nietzsche and countless others makes this argument already?
Out of life's school of war.--What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
This guy (the author) is supposed to be at my school this coming up Wednesday.
> The greatest attrocities in mankind's history
> have been in the name of religion.
What religion was Stalin acting in the name of?
Or Hitler?
Or Pol Pot?
Or Mao?
Or the settlers who killed most of the Native Americans?
Or...
Blind faith that all the world's problems have been caused by religion is even less rational than blind faith in religion. A fundamentalist extremist is a nutjob, regardless of whether he's a religious nutjob or an atheistic nutjob; take care you don't edge into the latter.
Smells like someone shit in your cereal... What's so bad about getting your word of god compared in the same sentence to The Daily Show? It sounds like you never watch The Daily Show. The breadth and depth of their coverage of the day's most hilarious events surpasses any other news source i've found.
I don't believe kids nowadays are dumber than before. However, in contrast with before we are more aware of how dumb they actually are.
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
It used to be "mensch" (and propably "het-zelvde") a few hunderd years ago. Languages just evolve to get rid of useless crap. Dutch is just a horrible illogical language and the purists keep adding silly stuff instead of making it more logical.
They are "optimizing" it? That is so stupid.
Deus est fatalis
I'm pretty sure they're not, but I haven't been by there for a year. Maybe they've got Mac hacks out by now.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Things that are bad, are actually good.
It needn't take a book, and/or modern culture to know that.
Shit, for instance, is bad, and yet it's good, because if we don't shit, we all die.
No kidding !
If things don't work as planned, frustration crops in, and " SHIT !!! " is often the first word we utter.
Imagine a world without shit.
Imagine that we have to yell " Holy Moly Sweet Jelly Pie ! " everytime we hammer our own thumb instead of that damn nail.
Doesn't " SHIT !!! " sounds better ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You are right. However, I just wish that there was common acknowledgement that 'standard' was just a dialect, and that people who don't speak it aren't stupid; they just grew up somewhere else. Oftentimes proponents talk about the corruption of language, and how speaking this one dialect will be the savior of the language, clear communication, and society in general. Get of your high horse. Language isn't dying, we just need a standard that all groups learn.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I miss-posted this to my original comment.
You are right. However, I just wish that there was common acknowledgement that 'standard' was just a dialect, and that people who don't speak it aren't stupid; they just grew up somewhere else. Oftentimes proponents talk about the corruption of language, and how speaking this one dialect will be the savior of the language, clear communication, and society in general. Get of your high horse. Language isn't dying, we just need a standard that all groups learn.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Almost no one wears a suit any more, day-to-day, but it's still the best way to dress for a job interview. Formal grammar is much the same - it shows you understand what is expected. It's not so much about clarity (though it helps), but about demonstrating social conformity. And that will always be a valuable skill.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think the most notable change that I've seen during my lifetime so far-- I remember pre-cable-tv days-- is that things such as language and images have increasingly become shorthand. This has enabled the average person to recall zillions of phrases and their associated corporate sponsors, maybe. Or learn specialized shorthand, such as that found in chat rooms or cell-phone text messaging. Video games at best have taught people how to research cheats.
There are zillions of pieces of knowledge that it has become necessary to know in order to perform daily tasks with any given technology. I fail to see how any of this could equate to making anyone "smarter"? In fact, the "convenience" of modern living--which many people probably mistake as a basic human need--has taken away the necessity to even know how anything really works. I would hardly consider this conducive to being "smarter."
I would equate the argument of this book--that pop culture is actually making us smarter--to saying "We created our own parallel reality. Look how good we are at knowing the details about our own parallel reality that we've created."
I -seriously- hope you're deliberately being ironic...
or how to use correct grammer
Grammar.
and I would mark with a standard of correctness which only allowed 1 spelling mistake and 1 gramatical mistake for every 100 words.
Grammatical, and you're way over your own standard already.
Now it is not that I have a problem with spell checking but,
Comma goes before the "but".
in other words spell checking is their to correct typos
"Their" is the possessive of "they". "There" is the one you're looking for.
grammer is correct, it is not there to spell for you and produce grammer for you
Grammar, GRAMMAR. Hey, anything would be better then nothing.
Now, I'm not a spelling nazi. I couldn't care less in most posts, so long as they're clear and legible, if a few words are misspelled, or in the wrong tense, or whatever. But your post tearing people a new one for making one misspelling in 100 words, while making six or so yourself in roughly that number, is hypocrisy, and that I do object to. Oh, and teachers should be encouraging their students to learn to use technology that's relevant now, not 30 years ago. That's called a "computer", demanding handwritten only assignments would be silly.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Gee, last i looked colors were based on the wavelength of the visible light that was reflected off the material due to some chemical stucture. Certain colors do not work together, because to the human eye they do not focus properly together, this is the very basis of clashing colors. A person that can't match colors is color-blind not nerdy. Nerdy is someone that actually understands physics well enough to known this, and be able to explain it. Not being color-blind. Also, you can't just spend 40 years of your life and jump into Quantum Physics. I've spent a good chunk of my life studying physics, and I still can't jump into Quantum like any of my professors can. Most of them are over 50, and just now starting to be able to explain it all to me. It's not that it's hard, it's just that there's so much you have to understand before it. Forgive typos, it's very late here and I'm wasting time on /.
Yes, I said it.