Final Blog!

Steven Johnson’s main point is that popular culture is actually making us much smarter, instead of dumbing us down. In fact, he likes to look at how popular culture makes us, the audience, think more intelligently. As we all know, television and films are much more complicated than they used to be. Instead of having one plot and two characters that the audience would follow, there are many small plots including many characters that somehow tie together in the end. Also, video games teach us more skills than reading a book does. Video games are not what they used to be and they have much more complicated plays that are in demand.
“To watch an episode of “Dallas” today is to be stunned by its glacial pace—by the arduous attempts to establish social relationships, by the excruciating simplicity of the plotline, by how obvious it was. A single episode of “The Sopranos,” by contrast, might follow five narrative threads, involving a dozen characters who weave in and out of the plot. Modern television also requires the viewer to do a lot of what Johnson calls “filling in,” as in a “Seinfeld” episode that subtly parodies the Kennedy assassination conspiracists, or a typical “Simpsons” episode, which may contain numerous allusions to politics or cinema or pop culture” (Gladwell, The New Yorker). The television shows are becoming more complicated as the years go by.
“For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ''24'' episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all” (Johnson, NY Times).
“But another kind of televised intelligence is on the rise. Think of the cognitive benefits conventionally ascribed to reading: attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads. Over the last half-century, programming on TV has increased the demands it places on precisely these mental faculties. This growing complexity involves three primary elements: multiple threading, flashing arrows and social networks” (Johnson, NY Times). Multiple threading, flashing arrows, and social networks really is what defines complicated popular culture that we have today. People that consume popular culture see these methods of developing complicated shows and films, which allow people to develop great cognitive skills.
I truly believe that popular culture does develop cognitive skills that books just don’t give us. I think it’s fascinating to compare the complexities of shows and films today. The most important thing is how the complexity is not even noticed today. We have become so accustomed to these types of shows that we don’t even realize how complex they actually are. I think that it has made us smarter. However, I don’t think it’s made us more intelligent as a whole. It has definitely helped us in some skills. However, I don’t think it’s helped us with everything. You can definitely call me traditional. I believe that a book can teach you more than anything else.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/05/16/050516crbo_books

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/magazine/24TV.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=e08bc7c1e7acbb59&ex=1271995200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss