Commentary

Einstein's Corner: Smart and Smarter vs. Dumb and Dumber

Steven Johnson's April 24th article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, "Watching TV Makes You Smarter," introduces the concept of the Sleeper Curve, a compelling theory that even "...the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all."

In response, Stay Free! magazine editor Carrie McLaren offers a compelling rejoinder -- Does watching TV make you stupid? -- suggesting that we change the channel on Johnson's Sleeper Curve theory, and return instead to our earlier assumptions that TV and mass media in general dumb us down.

Both writers are pandering to the sensibilities and mores of their established constituencies: Johnson it would seem to the cheerleaders and advocates of pop culture, and McLaren to the more critically-attuned media ecology and media literacy crowds.

I would suggest that while both arguments are entertaining and extremely well articulated, the truth lies somewhere between them: Watching more TV doesn't make us smarter, and it doesn't make us stupider either. The fact that we can process more information in less time doesn't mean we are smarter today than we were two generations ago; it merely suggests -- among other things -- that we are required by virtue of enhanced bandwidth and the additional commercial tonnage it delivers to process more information than ever before.

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Likewise, the fact that so much of that information comes via television or mass media doesn't mean we are any dumber than previous generations. Increased complexity simply does not translate into enhanced intelligence, or vice versa. Nor does the choice of print over electronic media somehow confer, imply, or require greater intelligence.

The increasing complexity of programming reflects, in large part, the enhanced intricacies of the escalating cat and mouse game between consumers and advertisers. After all, the ads are not there -- contrary to one of the more enduring and self-promotional mythologies of the advertising and marketing industries -- to support the programs. On the contrary, the programs are there to support the ads.

So who's smarter, consumers who invest in time-shifting and ad-filtering technologies just for the opportunity to avoid commercial advertising, or the advertisers and marketers who find new, perhaps more insidious and invasive ways to hunt them down? Complexity begets complexity as the increased complexity of the message reflects the increased complexity of the medium.

The increasing complexity of programming is symptomatic of something else as well: The fact that we now live in a society whose default condition is obsessive compulsive behavior and addiction. Unmanageable complexity is a signature characteristic of addiction. The accelerated effort to feed our escalating media consumption habits simply generates commensurately escalating demands on our time, technology, and resources. And it all adds up to greater complexity. Again, complexity begets complexity.

For all their differences, the arguments of both Johnson and McLaren reinforce the same old supply-side theory: that the programming and how the programming is delivered are the central components. Both arguments, however, ignore the demand side. I would argue that our obsessions with and addictions to the media -- like our obsessions and addictions to any other narcotic -- generate increased demand for more of just about everything. Obsession and addiction are demand-side problems that cannot be resolved by interdiction at the drug source or by otherwise tampering with the supply.

The smarter/dumber debate is what ensues when the addiction assumes the role of debate moderator (as it always will). Both sides -- and all the resources they bring to bear (including and especially intellect) -- wind up promoting the interests of the addiction itself. The smarter/dumber debate is like the debate about campaign finance reform; our addiction to the media would have us believe that where the money to buy the ads comes from and the content of the ads themselves are somehow more important than where the money actually winds up: in the hands of the media dealers whose only collective motto is eat all you want, we'll make more. It's just another form of the red state/blue state debate that essentially argues the intelligence of the people who watch TV versus the intelligence of the people who produce TV. Both sides are equally obsessed with and addicted to media.

Perhaps the only truly sober point of view on the media landscape nowadays arrives through the eyes of recovering addicts -- the only ones schooled in sobriety.

What do you think?

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