Cultural critics like to speculate on the cognitive changes induced by new forms of media, but they rarely invoke the insights of brain science and other empirical research in backing up those claims. All too often, this has the effect of reducing their arguments to mere superstition.
Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good For You
(His book argues that pop culture is increasing intelligence, not dumbing it down. He argues that plot complexity has increased and that keeping track of large storylines is now much more common place, and that these skills manifest themselves in increased social intelligence (and this in turn might manifest itself in overall intelligence, I’m not sure). Here, he’s specifically discussing video games and the internet.)
I highly recommend the book, it’s interesting in terms of cognitive science as well as cultural and social analysis. I thought it sounded only mildly interesting when I first picked it up, but now I’m thinking more along the lines that it’s extremely interesting. At least give it a try, because it’s difficult to describe what makes it so good.
Really? I thought it was very short and not in depth at all; yeah, his handful of graphs of episodes was interesting from the data visualization viewpoint, but most of his arguments, such as they were, were qualititative and hand-wavey. (What, there are no simplistic shows these days?)
It was rather broad and not very in depth, but it was largely conceptually oriented. He conceded that there were simplistic shows, but argued that the simplistic shows of today tend to be more complicated than the simplistic shows of yesterday. If you disagree...
I don’t know how I’d refute him—there are so many TV shows, both now and then! One can cherrypick pretty much anything one likes, although I don’t personally watch TV anymore and couldn’t do it.
(I’m reminded how people online sometimes say ‘anime really sucked in time period X’, because they’re only familiar with anime released in the ’00s and ‘10s, while if you look at an actual full 30+ strong roster of one of their example ‘sucking’ years like eg. 1991, you’ll often see a whole litany of great or influential series like Nadia, City Hunter, Ranma 1⁄2, Dragon Ball Z, and Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory. Well, yeah, if you forget entirely about them, I suppose 1991 seems like a really sucky year compared to 2010 or whatever.)
Those anime you cite all sucked though, they were considered “great” or “influential” at the time because people didn’t know any better. Anime technology has advanced vastly in the past twenty years.
Serial Experiments Lain severely disappointed me. It’s nicely creepy and atmospheric but.... (rot13) vg’f ernyyl n fgnaqneq “punatryvat” fgbel—ohg vafgrnq bs snvevrf naq zntvpny jbeyqf naq punatryvat puvyqera, jr unir cebtenzf naq gur Vagrearg naq cebtenzf orpbzvat syrfu.
Gur fpvrapr-svpgvba ryrzragf srry whfg pbfzrgvp punatrf jura gur pber bs gur fgbel vf cher snvel-gnyr… N tevz snvel-gnyr gb or fher, ohg n snvel-gnyr abarguryrff.
I don’t consider Hikaru no Go to be anything more than a gimmick anime like Moyashimon, so I have no idea for it.
The most obvious counterpart to Madoka would be Evangelion (yeah I know Sailor Moon was airing in the ’90s and was more popular and influential than Madoka will ever be, but I think Eva is a better comparison).
Seconding Serial Experiments Lain and Evangelion. Also Cowboy Bebop was in the 90s.
Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Berserk, Excel Saga and Trigun are uneven, but have their moments.
I also have a soft spot for the trashy ultraviolent OVA stuff from the early 90s, like Doomed Megalopolis and AD Police Files, but I’m not sure if it’s good in any objective sense.
That was explanation or elaboration, not evidence. I was going to just leave “they sucked” as a bare assertion rather than get into an anime slapfight on LessWrong. If you link me to your anime blog I will be happy to take it up in the comments section there, though.
You could analyze the way that people in the TV business think and talk about complexity, while assuming that they know what they’re doing. He seemed to do a bit of this.
Does he look at the possibility that people are getting more intelligent for some other reason, and popular art is the result of creators serving a more intelligent audience rather than more complex art making people smarter?
No. But your question seems odd. I didn’t interpret the book as an attempt to start with the increase in intelligence and then to assume/explain why pop culture was the cause. Rather, I interpreted the book as an attempt to analyze pop culture, which then found that pop culture did things that seemed like they would have beneficial effects. His analysis of the things that pop culture does in our minds is what I found interesting, not so much the parts which talked about intelligence more generally.
Additionally, I’m not really sure what someone would do to identify pop culture as the cause of this increase as opposed to something else. I’m not sure what other factors could be responsible.
I don’t believe the title implies that his primary concern is explaining an intelligence increase.
There are two ways of looking at the interaction between pop culture and intelligence. You can start by analyzing intelligence and noticing that it seems to increase, and then trying to figure out why, and then figuring out that pop culture caused it. Or, you can start by analyzing pop culture, and then noticing that it seems to do things that would have cognitive benefits, and then attaching this to the increase in intelligence as a factor that helps explain it. The book does the latter, not the former.
I think any link between tv and intelligence is unproven, but at least the book does something to debunk the common idea that television is making people stupider.
Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good For You
(His book argues that pop culture is increasing intelligence, not dumbing it down. He argues that plot complexity has increased and that keeping track of large storylines is now much more common place, and that these skills manifest themselves in increased social intelligence (and this in turn might manifest itself in overall intelligence, I’m not sure). Here, he’s specifically discussing video games and the internet.)
I highly recommend the book, it’s interesting in terms of cognitive science as well as cultural and social analysis. I thought it sounded only mildly interesting when I first picked it up, but now I’m thinking more along the lines that it’s extremely interesting. At least give it a try, because it’s difficult to describe what makes it so good.
Really? I thought it was very short and not in depth at all; yeah, his handful of graphs of episodes was interesting from the data visualization viewpoint, but most of his arguments, such as they were, were qualititative and hand-wavey. (What, there are no simplistic shows these days?)
It was rather broad and not very in depth, but it was largely conceptually oriented. He conceded that there were simplistic shows, but argued that the simplistic shows of today tend to be more complicated than the simplistic shows of yesterday. If you disagree...
I don’t know how I’d refute him—there are so many TV shows, both now and then! One can cherrypick pretty much anything one likes, although I don’t personally watch TV anymore and couldn’t do it.
(I’m reminded how people online sometimes say ‘anime really sucked in time period X’, because they’re only familiar with anime released in the ’00s and ‘10s, while if you look at an actual full 30+ strong roster of one of their example ‘sucking’ years like eg. 1991, you’ll often see a whole litany of great or influential series like Nadia, City Hunter, Ranma 1⁄2, Dragon Ball Z, and Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory. Well, yeah, if you forget entirely about them, I suppose 1991 seems like a really sucky year compared to 2010 or whatever.)
Those anime you cite all sucked though, they were considered “great” or “influential” at the time because people didn’t know any better. Anime technology has advanced vastly in the past twenty years.
Anime technology has advanced, yes, but I don’t know how you go from that to ‘all my examples sucked’.
Out of curiosity, what in the 90s compares to Hikaru no Go or Madoka Magica?
Serial Experiments Lain.
Serial Experiments Lain severely disappointed me. It’s nicely creepy and atmospheric but....
(rot13) vg’f ernyyl n fgnaqneq “punatryvat” fgbel—ohg vafgrnq bs snvevrf naq zntvpny jbeyqf naq punatryvat puvyqera, jr unir cebtenzf naq gur Vagrearg naq cebtenzf orpbzvat syrfu.
Gur fpvrapr-svpgvba ryrzragf srry whfg pbfzrgvp punatrf jura gur pber bs gur fgbel vf cher snvel-gnyr… N tevz snvel-gnyr gb or fher, ohg n snvel-gnyr abarguryrff.
I don’t consider Hikaru no Go to be anything more than a gimmick anime like Moyashimon, so I have no idea for it.
The most obvious counterpart to Madoka would be Evangelion (yeah I know Sailor Moon was airing in the ’90s and was more popular and influential than Madoka will ever be, but I think Eva is a better comparison).
Exactly. It doesn’t look like I’m going to finish Hikaru no Go by the end of the year, but I finished Serial Experiments Lain (a 90s anime) in less than 3 days.
Seconding Serial Experiments Lain and Evangelion. Also Cowboy Bebop was in the 90s.
Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Berserk, Excel Saga and Trigun are uneven, but have their moments.
I also have a soft spot for the trashy ultraviolent OVA stuff from the early 90s, like Doomed Megalopolis and AD Police Files, but I’m not sure if it’s good in any objective sense.
Heh… In my myanimelist profile I’ve only listed three anime series as favourites, and Hikaru no Go and Madoka Magica are two of them.
The third one is “Revolutionary Girl Utena”, from the 1990s. I think it’s the sort of series that one either loves or hates—but I loved it.
That was explanation or elaboration, not evidence. I was going to just leave “they sucked” as a bare assertion rather than get into an anime slapfight on LessWrong. If you link me to your anime blog I will be happy to take it up in the comments section there, though.
Alas, I have no anime blog!
You could analyze the way that people in the TV business think and talk about complexity, while assuming that they know what they’re doing. He seemed to do a bit of this.
I’d start by looking at the shows with the highest ratings.
Does he look at the possibility that people are getting more intelligent for some other reason, and popular art is the result of creators serving a more intelligent audience rather than more complex art making people smarter?
No. But your question seems odd. I didn’t interpret the book as an attempt to start with the increase in intelligence and then to assume/explain why pop culture was the cause. Rather, I interpreted the book as an attempt to analyze pop culture, which then found that pop culture did things that seemed like they would have beneficial effects. His analysis of the things that pop culture does in our minds is what I found interesting, not so much the parts which talked about intelligence more generally.
Additionally, I’m not really sure what someone would do to identify pop culture as the cause of this increase as opposed to something else. I’m not sure what other factors could be responsible.
I was reacting to the title of the book.
I don’t believe the title implies that his primary concern is explaining an intelligence increase.
There are two ways of looking at the interaction between pop culture and intelligence. You can start by analyzing intelligence and noticing that it seems to increase, and then trying to figure out why, and then figuring out that pop culture caused it. Or, you can start by analyzing pop culture, and then noticing that it seems to do things that would have cognitive benefits, and then attaching this to the increase in intelligence as a factor that helps explain it. The book does the latter, not the former.
I think any link between tv and intelligence is unproven, but at least the book does something to debunk the common idea that television is making people stupider.