Download Everything Bad Is Good For You

Everything Bad Is Good For You
Part II
The Flynn Effect
• "How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and
Scholastic Achievement?“ Harvard
Educational Review (Arthur Jensen, 1969).
• The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray,
1994).
• [James] Flynn: The Flynn Effect (average
IQ scores have been on the rise).
The Flynn Effect
• “The gene pool hasn’t changed in a
generation, and yet the scores have gone up.
Some environmental factor (or combination
of factors) must be responsible for the
increase in the specific forms of intelligence
that IQ measures: problem solving, abstract
reasoning, pattern recognition, spatial logic”
(142).
Environmental Complexity
• Johnson attributes the rise in mean IQ
scores over the past half century to the
increasing complexity of the media
environment.
• Three (four?) pieces of evidence support
this hypothesis
Environmental Complexity
1. Higher IQ scores coincide with the increased
complexity of the media products.
2. The increase in scores grew more dramatic with
the shift from skill-based evaluations of
intelligence to “g” (a measure of fluid
intelligence).
3. Fluid intelligence (“g”) has improved while
skill-based intelligence has not.
Environmental Complexity
4. The middle range of IQ scores has been
improved while the top end has remained
essentially the same.
• “The Sleeper Curve shows that the popular
culture is growing more complex, yet it is not
sufficiently complex to challenge the most gifted
minds, which is why the geniuses aren’t getting
any smarter” (152).
Why?
• Why is the Sleeper Curve occurring?
– “The forces driving the Sleeper Curve straddle
three different realms of experience: the
economic, the technological, and the
neurological” (137).
• Market forces.
• Technological trends.
• The appetites of the human brain.
Why?
• Economic causes of the Sleeper Curve:
– The profitability of media with high replay
value.
• Because the profitability of secondary venues such
as syndication and DVD have outpaced the
profitability of primary venues, it is economically
advantageous to produce and distribute media that
can sustain multiple viewings.
• It is more efficient to produce one program that can
sustain 10 viewings than 5 that can sustain only two.
Why?
• Economic causes of the Sleeper Curve:
– The profitability of media with high replay
value.
• LOP (Least Objectionable Programming) Vs. MRP
(Most Repeatable Programming). (see page 161)
• From “Live” programming to “Library”
programming: “If you’re buying a piece of
entertainment for your permanent collection, you
don’t want instant gratification; you want something
that rewards greater scrutiny” (163).
Why?
• Technological causes of the Sleeper Curve:
– New technologies enable repetition.
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The VCR
Cable syndication
DVD players
TiVo
On demand programming
Game consoles
Why?
• Technological causes of the Sleeper Curve:
– The internet as a popular culture classroom
discussion. Very motivated fans (“thought
leaders”) share information and involve less
motivated fans. Katz & Lazarsfeld’s (1955)
“two-step flow” model of mass communication.
– New technologies require the continuous and
progressive comprehension of new platforms.
Why?
• Flow theory (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1990):
– “Cognitive scientists have argued that the most
effective learning takes place at the outer edges of
a student’s competence: building on knowledge
that the student has already acquired, but
challenging him with new problems to solve.
Make the learning environment too easy, or too
hard, and students get bored or frustrated and
lose interest” (177).
Why?
• The mind adapts to adaptation.
– “Release new technologies that challenge the
mind without overtaxing it, and release them in
shorter and shorter cycles, and the line that
tracks our abilities to probe and master complex
systems will steadily ascend, turning upward in
a parabolic climb as the cycles of electric speed
increase” (179).
Why?
• Neurological causes of the Sleeper Curve
– Brains like to be challenged.
– “The games are growing more challenging
because there’s an economic incentive to make
them more challenging – and that economic
incentive exists because our brains like to be
challenged” (182).
A Consequence
• Johnson acknowledges that one particular
type of reading (and writing) has been a
casualty of interactive media: work that
involves exposition of argument or
narrative.
• Reading through a hypertext document or
skimming email differs substantially from
the skill of truly following a line of thought.
A Consequence
• Redefining intelligence.
– “So the Sleeper Curve suggests that the popular
culture is not doing as good a job at training our
minds to follow sustained textual argument or
narrative that doesn’t involve genuine
interactivity” (187).
A Consequence
• What about morality?