Everything Bad 1
Transcript of Everything Bad 1
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The Elite Perspective
³Ours is an age besotted with graphicentertainments. And in an increasinglyinfantilized society, whose moral philosophy is
reducible to a celebration of µchoice,¶ adults aredecreasingly distinguishable from children intheir absorption in entertainments and the kindsof entertainments they are absorbed in ± videogames, computer games, hand-held games,movies on their computers and so on. This isprogress: more sophisticated delivery of stupidity.´ (George Will)
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The Sleeper Curve
What is the sleeper curve?
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The Sleeper Curve
What is the sleeper curve?
± Popular culture is becoming more
intellectually demanding, not less.
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The Sleeper Curve
What is the sleeper curve?
± Popular culture is becoming more
intellectually demanding, not less.
Emphasis on cognition over content:
± ³Today¶s popular culture may not be showing
us the righteous path. But it is making us
smarter´ (14).
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Games
³The intellectual nourishment of reading books is
so deeply ingrained in our assumptions that it¶s
hard to contemplate a different viewpoint. But
as McLuhan famously observed, the problemwith judging new cultural systems on their own
terms is that the presence of the recent past
inevitably colors your vision of the emerging
form, highlighting the flaws and imperfections´(18).
What if games came first? (see page 19)
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Games
Different media are ³good at´ different
tasks, therefore we should view a
particular medium as a specialized tool: ± ³The very fact that I am presenting this
argument to you in the form of a book and not
a television drama or a video game should
make it clear that I believe the printed wordremains the most powerful vehicle for
conveying complicated information«´ (23).
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Games
Two arguments
1. ³By almost all the standards we use to
measure reading¶s cognitive benefits ±
attention, memory, following threads, and so
on ± the nonliterary popular culture has
been steadily growing more challenging over
the past thirty years´ (23).
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Games
Two arguments
2. ³Increasingly, the nonliterary popular culture
is honing different mental skills that are just
as important as the ones exercised by
reading books´ (23).
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Games
Evidence:
± The increasing difficulty level of videogames.
Compare Pong or PacMan to Everquest or
Ultima.
± The emergence of ³game guides.´
± The SimCity 2000 example.
Why are children able to internalize sophisticatedsets of rules while playing games, but seem to
have more difficulty in the classroom?
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Games
Neurological reward circuitry:
± ³The dopamine system is a kind of
accountant: keeping track of expected
rewards, and sending out an alert ± in the
form of lowered dopamine levels ± when
those rewards don¶t arrive as promised´ (34).
± Seeking circuitry: ³Where our brain wiring isconcerned, the craving instinct triggers a
desire to explore´ (35).
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Games
Neurological reward circuitry
± The T etris example.
± ³Just asT
etris streamlines the fuzzy world of visual reality to a core set of interacting
shapes, most games offer a fictional world
where rewards are larger, and more vivid,
more clearly defined, than life´ (36).
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Games
Games harness and manipulate ³seeking´
behavior in players based upon the
neurological reward circuitry!
± ³In the initial stages of play, you may be
dazzled by the game¶s graphics. But most of
the time, when you¶re hooked on a game,
what draws you in is an elemental form of desire: the desire to see the next thing ́ (37).
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Games
How do we seek (and make decisions) ingames?
± Probing
± Telescoping
Probing describes the active learning thatoccurs when new knowledge is acquired
based on real-time interaction with asystem. In the past, this has been referredto as ³tinkering.´
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Games
Probing makes casual use of the scientificmethod:
± James Paul Gee: 1. Probe, 2. Hypothesize,
3. Reprobe, 4. Rethink.
³Probing often takes the form of seekingout the limits of the simulation, the pointsat which the illusion of reality breaks down,and you can sense that¶s all just a bunchof algorithms behind the curtain´ (45).
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Games
ENEMIES MOVE IN
PREDICT ABLEPATTERNS
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Games
Telescoping: The player¶s ability to
coordinate among immediate,
intermediate, and long-term goals.
Telescoping IS NOT Multitasking.
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Games
One of the most important things in
understanding the intellectual benefits of
gaming is to separate cognition from
content. In some respects, videogame
puzzles strongly resemble word problems
that you might find on an SAT or GRE.
Games are about learning how to makedecisions which create order out of chaos.
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Television
The same thesis that applied to games ± thatcontent is not an indicator of cognitivecomplexity ± can be applied to television.
Television programs have become vastly morecomplex since the advent of the medium. ± ³So if we¶re going to start tracking swear words and
wardrobe malfunctions, we ought to at least includeanother line on the graph: one that charts the
cognitive demands that televised narratives place ontheir viewers. That line, too, is trending upward at adramatic rate´ (63).
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Television
Television has grown in cognitive
complexity in at least two areas:
± Multiple threading.
± Flashing arrows.
± Social networks.
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Television
Multiple threading
± ³Part of the cognitive work comes from
following multiple threads, keeping often
densely interwoven plotlines distinct in your
head as you watch. But another part involves
the viewer¶s µfilling in¶: making sense of
information that has been either deliberately
withheld or deliberately left obscure´ (63).
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Television
Multiple threading
± Dragnet (single thread)
± Starsky and Hutch (elementary double thread) ± Hill Street Blues (multiple threads + thematic
complexity)
± The Sopranos (multiple threads + thematic
and structural complexity)
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Television
Flashing arrows
Texture (total visual information in ascene) Vs. Substance (the information inthe scene that you need to know in order to understand the narrative).
Flashing arrows are those cinematic
devices (e.g., camera/editing techniquesand conventions) that separate substancefrom texture.
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Television
Flashing arrows ³reduce the amount of
analytic work you need to make sense of a
story. All you have to do is follow the
arrows´ (74).
When flashing arrows are removed,
audiences must concentrate in order to
understand what¶s happening. Think of W est W ing , ER , 24.
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Television
Another byproduct of the loss of flashing
arrows is the requirement of a tolerance of
ambiguity in the viewer. Much like in
games, a viewer must be willing to
temporarily deal with confusion and
uncertainty. The viewer must also be
adept at learning µon the fly¶ andgenerating/testing hypotheses about
outcomes.
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Television
What about comedy?
± The roles of intertextuality and ³in-joking´
±T
he need for multiple viewings (in marketterms, this also anticipates syndication).
The Simpsons
Seinfeld
The Critic
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Television
What about Reality Television?
± A relationship between reality programming
and gaming. If early TV took it¶s cues from
vaudeville and three-act stage plays, Reality
TV takes its cues from the world of the game.
± Partially defined rules and the need to
cultivate tolerance of ambiguity, learn on thefly, and make/test hypotheses.
± Navigating social environments.
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Television
Social intelligence: The ability to read and
interpret the emotions and motivations of
others. The AQ score.
± ³Reality shows, in turn, challenge our
emotional intelligence and our AQ. They are,
in a sense, elaborately staged group
psychology experiments«´ (99).
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Television
The importance of social intelligence:
± ³Thanks to our biological and cultural
heritage, we live in large bands of interacting
humans, and people whose minds are skilled
at visualizing all the relationships in those
bands are likely to thrive, while those whose
minds have difficulty keeping track are
invariably handicapped´ (109).
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Television
Reality TV and politics? Using AQ and
social intelligence to evaluate candidates?
± What would Postman say? (see pgs. 100-
101)
± What do you think about this argument?
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Television
Social networks:
± It isn¶t only reality television that has the
potential to improve social intelligence. Think
of how the level of intricacy in the
relationships among television characters has
increased
From Dallas to 24.
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Internet and Film
The Internet
± Supporting material
± Interface comprehension
± From television to Google?
Is film µtapped out¶ in terms of its ability to
teach us?