...Idiot Box,” published in Slate on March 25,2005, Dana Stevens argues against what Johnson has to say about how television makes us smarter. Stevens explains how television is just a way for Americans to become overly obsessed with shows that have no value to the way our brains work. She wants her readers to know that television is just a form of entertainment and that there are more things to life than just a couch and remote. She explains how Steven Johnson is wrong about how TV is making Americans smarter. Parents used to make their children go outside and get exercise, but now they just put their children in front of a TV with an “educational” show on. Ultimately what is at stake here is that children and adults are using TV to get smarter. Stevens is persuasive by using a sarcastic tone that some readers might not appreciate but she gets her point across, logic on how television really is, and refuting the opposing argument. By using these points the reader is able to see how television is not making the brain work more or less, it just entertains. From start to finish, Stevens applies sarcasm into her essay by picking at Johnson’s logic on how television is making the world smarter. She states, “If watching TV really makes you smarter, as Steven Johnson argued in an article…then I guess I need to watch a lot more of it because try as I might, I could make no sense of Johnson’s piece” (Stevens 295). Mentioning another writer in her essay and then making fun of Johnson right...
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...Does TV make you smarter or are you idoit in the box? Television has been around since the 1920s transmitting and receiving images. Over the years TV has marked its way through our lives. Majority of Americans have a more than one TV and DVD player in their home. How has TV evolved since the 1920’s? Has TV now changed the way we act and live as human beings? Does television now make us smarter than it did in early 1920s or has it made us idiots and less intelligent? Steven Johnson a writer who published his article in new time magazines called watching TV makes your smarter? Dana Stevens, a movie critic also written for the New York times; responded to Steven Johnson article by calling thinking outside the idiot box. Steven believes that TV makes us more intelligent while Dana Steven argues that TV doesn’t enhance our brains we shouldn’t base our lives around the television set. Johnson states that watching shows like “24″ make people smarter, because it makes them think about certain events that had occurred and it makes the audience think critically while watching. The show also suggest, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less.”(Johnson 279) The sleep curve says Steven Johnson, is the single most important new force altering mental development of today, and I believe it is largely a force of good: enhancing our cognitive brains, not dumbing them down.(Johnson 291). Johnson also states that bad TV, like reality...
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...The Effect TV Has On Its Viewers In Dana Stevens’ article, “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box,” she summarizes Steven Johnson’s argument that “Watching TV Makes You Smarter.” Johnson argues that understanding the complexity of today’s TV shows makes viewers smarter. Stevens disagrees with Johnson’s statement saying, “watching TV teaches you to watch more TV”(296). Both authors discuss the issue of television and its impact on viewers’ intelligence; they share a common topic but utilize very different literary elements. Stevens and Johnson both employ different tones, themes, and dialogue to prove their arguments on the effect that TV has on its viewers. While both authors discuss a similar topic, they utilize different themes. These themes are made clear through the examples that both authors incorporate. In Johnson’s article he uses examples from popular TV shows such as 24, The West Wing, and E.R. He uses 24 as an example of how we use our brain in order to navigate through the intricate information and grasp the important concepts in order to make sense of an episode. Another example that Johnson shows us is the dialogue between characters on shows like E.R and The West Wing that do not talk down to its audience. “ The characters talk faster in these shows”(287) and use much more scientifically language which most viewers do not understand. This complex language requires the viewer to pay closer attention to the context in order to make sense of the words being spoken....
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...Watching TV Makes You Smarter In the article Watching TV Makes You Smarter by Steven Johnson, the author argues that by watching television shows various television shows, people actually become smarter. In many television shows, the episodes connect the lives of its characters within the defined "story arc." The Hollywood jargon says: "a defined personality with motivations and obstacles and specific relationships with other characters. By drawing a web of these interconnected plots and personalities, the structure resembles a hit TV series such as Bonanza. Furthermore, the culture is becoming more cognitively demanding. This is seen in the TV series 24. To make sense of an episode, one would have to integrate far more information than they would have several decades ago. "To keep up...you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting relationships." Johnson calls this the "sleeper curve," which is the most debased forms of mass diversion, such as video games and violent television dramas, and juvenile sitcoms, turn out to be nutritional after all. "The sleeper curve is the most important new force altering the mental development of young people today" says Johnson. He believes it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down. He also says that the morals of stories on television shows have grown. A counter argument by a critic says that the media has lost in moral clarity, and has gained in realism. Johnson believes...
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...Watching TV While Steve John used a lot of different examples in his “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”, he in fact did so to show that there are many evidences to prove his claim, and as long as the readers have watched at least two shows that he talks about, the point is quite clear that the TV series industry has well improved its role in exercising our mind in the last few decades. John’s work, however, bewilders readers easily with its novel graphs and manifold examples of outdated shows. With his new way of illustration, readers may have to be familiar with TV shows; how scenes take place at various times and places have clues to the one main story line; how the seemingly unrelated plots interwoven together to make a bigger and more profound story line. But if read closely the graphs are not hard to understand, and while Johnson clearly isn’t writing to people who don’t watch TV, the shows he brings up would be nonsense to the group, and on top of that it is not necessary for the readers to even know the shows he talks about, if the readers can pay most of their attention on structure change of the shows, and not the contents of them. As Johnson putted “ Over the last half-century, programming on TV has increased the demands it places on precisely these mental faculties. ” According to Johnson, these faculties are attention, patience, retention, and the parsing of narrative thread, and they are the cognitive benefits ascribed to reading. So examining whether watching TV shows...
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...Summary: Watching TV Makes You Smarter In the featured article, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter,” the author, Steven Johnson, justifies his opinipn on the affects television has on the mental development on young people. Readers will notice early on that he opens up first with a comparison of shows that were aired in the past to that are more recent and supportive of his thesis. An older show that he used as an example, Dragnet, only follow one or two characters, has a single plot, and then reaches a conclusion. He then, in contrast, goes to describe a show that aired decades after Dragnet that in the new age of multiple thread television. This show, Hills Street Blues, differentiates the old standard in many ways. It has plenty of primary characters, quick scenes, and a couple of threads from previous episodes. Hills Street Blues is the show that generated the multi-threaded drama genre. “What you see when you make these head-to-head comparisons is that a rising tide of complexity has been lifting programming at the bottom of the quality spectrum and at the top.” The argument of this essay is based on the question, does watching TV make you smarter? According to Steven Johnson , “ I believe that the Sleeper Curve is the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down.” His argument is that television does not slow down our mental growth...
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...Is Google making us stupid? Nicholas Carr doesn’t believe so, In his essay Is Google Making Us Stupid? From his article in the Atlantic magazine in 2008, he explains that Google does not make people stupid. Although he does go through and explain how Google has effects on an individual via personal anecdotes, historical references, and current studies. Biggest idea is that Carr wanted to present is that Google hasn’t made humans smarter or dumber, they have just become more dependent on the internet which has consequences. Personal anecdotes helped make Carr’s point relatable to the effects of Google. He went on and told many stories. One in particular to focus on is how his attention span has gotten shorter, “I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin...
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...Does TV really make you smarter? Over the past decades, television has become such integrated part of our life that many of us are unable to live without them. The idea of television and its relationship with intelligence have triggered great controversy. Steven Johnson argues that the increasing complexity of the television shows compared to a few decades ago, have helped the viewers to improve their cognitive and inference abilities, essentially, watching the television make you smarter. On the contrary, Dana Stevens argues that watching the television does not essentially make the viewers smarter, but its negative impact, especially on younger generation, is almost unquestionable. Both Arthur have argued the effects of the television on the viewers, but they differ essentially on the impacts of the television. The main difference lies in Johnson’s acceptance and Stevens’ rejection of the assumption that the effect of the television has a positive impact on the viewers’ cognitive ability. Common sense seems to dictate that even though televisions have changed the way people think, but their effects are not necessarily positive. According to Johnson, television programs have grown more complicated over time. As evidence, he pointed out the shows like “24” have integrate far more information than a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Johnson assumes that by keeping up with the entertainment, such as “24”, the viewers need to pay attention, and make inferences to keep...
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...paper thin and we sit in front of it just mesmerized by what we watch on the screen. We watch anything from the news, to reality television, to educational programs, and so on. It’s such a powerful tool that can have a big influence on most consumers because most of us sit in front of it either when we are bored or just want to relax. It is a phenomenon that has allowed us to see the latest news, advertisements, the latest movies, or even the most up to date current events that is happening throughout the whole world. History of Television There are different Era’s of the televisions. Prior to the year 1935, it was called the Mechanical Television Era. It was the first generation and was not completely electronic which displayed a TV screen and it had a small motor with a spinning disc and neon lamp. (Bennett, 2001) First Media Advertisement in the United States In the United States, the first advertisement shown on the television was for Bulova and it had showed for 10 seconds and was placed before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. The company paid only $9.00 for the advertisement. There are two main characteristics to television advertisement in the United States. The first task is to create a television advertisement that had met the standards and second, the placing of the advertisement on television through a certain type of media that would reach the type of customer they are aiming for. Advertisement Guidelines ...
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...For You?” Popular culture which has been shortened to pop culture is defined as “cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people.” (“pop culture”) Television, movies, music, art, the internet, famous people, sports, and politics are some of the major components that make up pop culture. As expected by the standards of society there is a profuse amount of controversy about pop culture being either good or bad for someone. In an email written to Schlessinger, the writer expresses that, “...teenager had been using very offensive swear words since the age of 5 when this person saw an R-rated movie” and “...teenager had started inhaling cocaine after seeing it done in a movie.” (Schlessinger) According to the writer, the above actions are a result of children being over exposed to pop culture. Yes, it is possible that the effect pop culture can have on children can be more profound since it influences their developing morals, but that does not rule out the possible effects it can have on adults as well. In his own experience Carr states that, “[He’s] not thinking the way [he] used to think...[he’d] spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now [his] concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages...” (Carr) So it can be concluded that pop culture has a way of affecting not just the young and innocent, but also mature adults. In “Watching TV Makes...
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...all so you can see that crazy cat video that makes you scream with joy. As a people we don’t fully understand what it takes to process all the data that comes through the internet. Older generations are mystified and confused at the wonders and horrors it has to hold. Unfortunately when a new technology confuses people they tend to lash out and completely reject the technology altogether. The older generations are claiming that the internet is dumbing down the younger generation. However, take a look back in time and the same was said about the printing press back during its invention. Fear of a new technology is not a new idea. Throughout the ages you can see people afraid of accepting new ideas or new machines out of fear that they do not understand them. This trend is so bad that sometimes a great idea will spark and an item will be created, but due to the fear of the unknown some ideas have failed and later re-booted as acceptance grew for the new idea. The internet is nothing but an information super highway and you get out of it what you put in. Wikipedia made its self the biggest fountain of knowledge on the internet or in any book form in just under 10 years, and an accumulated 100 million hours editing fixing changing and posting. During the printing press era the church was calling out in revolt claiming that the press was evil and “if not controlled, would lead to chaos and the dismemberment of European intellectual life.” Just as today we are told that tv and the...
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...some of the major components that make up pop culture. As expected by the standards of society there is a profuse amount of controversy about pop culture being either good or bad for someone. In an email written to Schlessinger, the writer expresses that, “...teenager had been using very offensive swear words since the age of 5 when this person saw an R-rated movie” and “...teenager had started inhaling cocaine after seeing it done in a movie.” (Schlessinger) According to the writer, the above actions are a result of children being over exposed to pop culture. Yes, it is possible that the effect pop culture can have on children can be more profound since it influences their developing morals, but that does not rule out the possible effects it can have on adults as well. In his own experience Carr states that, “[He’s] not thinking the way [he] used to think...[he’d] spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now [his] concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages...” (Carr) So it can be concluded that pop culture has a way of affecting not just the young and innocent, but also mature adults. In “Watching TV Makes You Smarter,” Johnson proposes that, “...it [TV] is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down.” (Johnson 279) In a direct response to this article, Stevens contradicts the view of Johnson by stating, “watching TV teaches you to watch more TV” and “Johnson fails to account...
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...After having read the essay, “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?*”, I was immediately overwhelmed with thoughts about this particular topic. Clay Shirky, the writer of this essay, approaches this topic in a very comparative manner. He points out how the bulk of publicly available digital media being created by amateurs in today’s world, is comparable to the way the invention of the printing press made it possible for the flood of mediocre at best, contemporary literature to circulate. I will give you my summarized interpretation of Shirky’s essay and evaluate both sides to this argument. The argument being made here is that since anybody with computer access can type and upload digital media, is the information quality becoming more and more questionable as time passes? In the 16th century, foes of print never imagined that new norms would be built around all this newly abundant contemporary literature. Shirky says, “Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society.” We are living through a very similar experience due to the power of the internet. As humans, we have a vast cognitive surplus. In the 20th century, we used a lot of our free time watching TV. Now we have started to devote a large portion of our time to the internet. It took over 100 million...
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...After having read the essay, “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?*”, I was immediately overwhelmed with thoughts about this particular topic. Clay Shirky, the writer of this essay, approaches this topic in a very comparative manner. He points out how the bulk of publicly available digital media being created by amateurs in today’s world, is comparable to the way the invention of the printing press made it possible for the flood of mediocre at best, contemporary literature to circulate. I will give you my summarized interpretation of Shirky’s essay and evaluate both sides to this argument. The argument being made here is that since anybody with computer access can type and upload digital media, is the information quality becoming more and more questionable as time passes? In the 16th century, foes of print never imagined that new norms would be built around all this newly abundant contemporary literature. Shirky says, “Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society.” We are living through a very similar experience due to the power of the internet. As humans, we have a vast cognitive surplus. In the 20th century, we used a lot of our free time watching TV. Now we have started to devote a large portion of our time to the internet. It took...
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...excuses for my procrastination. Unless I can get away with the “I was distracted by technology” excuse. The technology has made it difficult to accomplish “intellectual tasks” on my one day off from work or school. I guess in a way technology has made me dumber. However, I'm not sure if technology has made us dumber. I watched the PBS debate titled Is Technology Making Us Smarter or Dumber?. I feel like team dumber made a couple great points on technology making us dumber. For example, they mentioned how Google caters it's search responses to what we have already searched. Google tells us what we want to hear. The bad thing is that because Google does this we can not open up our world views as easily. They argued that most people take what they see on the internet at face value and don't bother to see any deeper. They are basically saying that we are too lazy to research and don't bother to search beyond the first page of Google search results. Team dumber mentioned the GPS. One of the members mentioned how we rely...
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