“You’re going to rot your brain out from watching that T.V.!” is a phrase that I heard all too much growing up, as I’m sure many other people did too. However, in today’s age I cannot help but wonder how much validity that phrase now holds. In 2005, the New York Times Magazine published an excerpt of one of Steven Johnson’s books, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter which address this exact question.
Johnson’s debut in the New York Times made such a splash that it earned its place within the They Say I Say the second edition with readings that was published ten years later in 2010. In Johnson’s excerpt he does not forbear from spewing out his opinion with no mercy while essentially using the title, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”, as the thesis. Immediately Johnson asserts that TV has rapidly evolved into a more substance based programs instead of programs meant to produce mindless drones drooling on the couch. During this evolution in the world of television, shows have become way more complex and now force you to process more information than ever before.
Johnson demonstrates the progress of TV over the years by comparing modern shows such as 24, and The …show more content…
However, this is not a new concept as Steven points out “Watching TV teaches you to watch more TV— a truth already grasped by the makers of children’s programming like Teletubbies, which is essentially a tutorial instructing toddlers in the basics of vegging out.” Mrs. Steven goes on to say that Johnson makes his case seem irrefutable by defining intelligence strictly as attention, patience, retention, and parsing of narrative threads (Graft, 296). However, when you truly start to examine Johnson’s case, it is clear that there are several holes present, which seem to undermine Johnson’s whole
Johnson’s debut in the New York Times made such a splash that it earned its place within the They Say I Say the second edition with readings that was published ten years later in 2010. In Johnson’s excerpt he does not forbear from spewing out his opinion with no mercy while essentially using the title, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”, as the thesis. Immediately Johnson asserts that TV has rapidly evolved into a more substance based programs instead of programs meant to produce mindless drones drooling on the couch. During this evolution in the world of television, shows have become way more complex and now force you to process more information than ever before.
Johnson demonstrates the progress of TV over the years by comparing modern shows such as 24, and The …show more content…
However, this is not a new concept as Steven points out “Watching TV teaches you to watch more TV— a truth already grasped by the makers of children’s programming like Teletubbies, which is essentially a tutorial instructing toddlers in the basics of vegging out.” Mrs. Steven goes on to say that Johnson makes his case seem irrefutable by defining intelligence strictly as attention, patience, retention, and parsing of narrative threads (Graft, 296). However, when you truly start to examine Johnson’s case, it is clear that there are several holes present, which seem to undermine Johnson’s whole