Everything Bad 1

8/2/2019 Everything Bad 1

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/everything-bad-1 1/33



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)



The Sleeper Curve

What is the sleeper curve?



The Sleeper Curve


± Popular culture is becoming more

intellectually demanding, not less.



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).



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)



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).



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).



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).



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?



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).



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).



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).



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.´



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).



Games

ENEMIES MOVE IN

PREDICT ABLEPATTERNS



Games

Telescoping: The player¶s ability to

coordinate among immediate,

intermediate, and long-term goals.

Telescoping IS NOT Multitasking.



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.



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).



Television

Television has grown in cognitive

complexity in at least two areas:

± Multiple threading.

± Flashing arrows.

± Social networks.



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).



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)



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.



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.



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.



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



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.



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).



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).



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?



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.



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?



Conclusion

The importance of collateral learning«

± Form vs. Content

± What does the form require of us cognitively?

Date post:	06-Apr-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	vikas956
View:	232 times
Download:	0 times

Everything Bad 1

Documents