Everything Bad Is Good For You

1. Everything Bad Is Good For You Part II

2. 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).

3. 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).

4. 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

5. Environmental Complexity • Higher IQ scores coincide with the increased complexity of the media products. • The increase in scores grew more dramatic with the shift from skill-based evaluations of intelligence to “g” (a measure of fluid intelligence). • Fluid intelligence (“g”) has improved while skill-based intelligence has not.

6. Environmental Complexity • 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).

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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).

10. Why? • Technological causes of the Sleeper Curve: • New technologies enable repetition. • The VCR • Cable syndication • DVD players • TiVo • On demand programming • Game consoles

11. 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.

12. 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).

13. 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).

14. 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).

15. 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.

16. 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).

17. A Consequence • What about morality?