from The New Yorker …

                             from The New Yorker
                                       May 16, 2005
                                    THE CRITICS: BOOKS

                                      Brain Candy
                    Is pop culture dumbing us down or smartening us up?

                                   by Malcolm Gladwell

1.                               has subsided, test scores have   he     is   dissecting   the
                                 continued to rise--not just in   intricacies of a piece of
Twenty years ago, a political    America but all over the         software, and he's perfectly
philosopher named James          developed    world.     What's   capable of using Nietzsche's
Flynn uncovered a curious        more, the increases have not     notion of eternal recurrence
fact. Americans--at least, as    been confined to children who    to discuss the new creative
measured by I.Q. tests--         go to enriched day-care          rules of television shows.
were getting smarter. This       centers and private schools.     Johnson        wants      to
fact had been obscured for       The middle part of the curve--   understand popular culture-
years, because the people        the    people     who     have   -not in the postmodern,
who      give    I.Q.    tests   supposedly been suffering        academic        sense     of
continually recalibrate the      from a deteriorating public-     wondering what "The Dukes
scoring system to keep the       school system and a steady       of Hazzard" tells us about
average at 100. But if you       diet     of  lowest-common-      Southern male alienation
took out the recalibration,      denominator television and       but in the very practical
Flynn found, I.Q. scores         mindless pop music--has          sense of wondering what
showed a steady upward           increased just as much. What     watching something like
trajectory, rising by about      on earth is happening? In the    "The Dukes of Hazzard"
three points per decade,         wonderfully       entertaining   does to the way our minds
which means that a person        "Everything Bad Is Good for      work.
whose I.Q. placed him in the     You" (Riverhead; $23.95),
top ten per cent of the          Steven Johnson proposes that     As Johnson points out,
American population in           what is making us smarter is     television is very different
1920 would today fall in the     precisely what we thought was    now from what it was thirty
bottom third. Some of that       making us dumber: popular        years ago. It's harder. A
effect, no doubt, is a simple    culture.                         typical episode of "Starsky
by-product of economic                                            and Hutch," in the nineteen-
progress: in the surge of        Johnson is the former editor     seventies,     followed     an
prosperity during the middle     of the online magazine Feed      essentially linear path: two
part of the last century,        and the author of a number of    characters, engaged in a
people in the West became        books    on    science    and    single story line, moving
better fed, better educated,     technology.   There    is   a    toward        a       decisive
and more familiar with           pleasing eclecticism to his      conclusion. To watch an
things like I.Q. tests. But,     thinking. He is as happy         episode of "Dallas" today is
even as that wave of change      analyzing "Finding Nemo" as      to be stunned by its glacial
pace--by      the     arduous    quarterbacking" was coined to     pastimes--like Monopoly or
attempts to establish social     describe the engaged feeling      gin rummy or chess--which
relationships,      by     the   spectators have in relation to    most of us grew up with.
excruciating simplicity of       games as opposed to stories.      They don't have a set of
the plotline, by how obvious     We absorb stories, but we         unambiguous rules that
it was. A single episode of      second-guess games. Reality       have to be learned and then
"The Sopranos," by contrast,     programming has brought           followed during the course
might follow five narrative      that second-guessing to prime     of play. This is why many of
threads, involving a dozen       time, only the game in            us find modern video games
characters who weave in and      question revolves around          baffling: we're not used to
out of the plot. Modern          social dexterity rather than      being in a situation where
television also requires the     the physical kind.                we have to figure out what to
viewer to do a lot of what                                         do. We think we only have to
Johnson calls "filling in," as   How can the greater cognitive     learn how to press the
in a "Seinfeld" episode that     demands     that   television     buttons faster. But these
subtly parodies the Kennedy      makes on us now, he wonders,      games withhold critical
assassination conspiracists,     not matter?                       information from the player.
or a typical "Simpsons"                                            Players have to explore and
episode, which may contain       Johnson develops the same         sort through hypotheses in
numerous       allusions    to   argument about video games.       order to make sense of the
politics or cinema or pop        Most of the people who            game's environment, which
culture. The extraordinary       denounce video games, he          is why a modern video game
amount of money now being        says, haven't actually played     can take forty hours to
made in the television           them--at least, not recently.     complete. Far from being
aftermarket--DVD sales and       Twenty years ago, games like      engines        of      instant
syndication--means that the      Tetris or Pac-Man were            gratification, as they are
creators of television shows     simple exercises in motor         often described, video games
now have an incentive to         coördination and pattern          are actually, Johnson writes,
make programming that can        recognition. Today's games        "all       about      delayed
sustain two or three or four     belong to another realm.          gratification--sometimes so
viewings. Even reality shows     Johnson points out that one of    long delayed that you
like "Survivor," Johnson         the    "walk-throughs"      for   wonder if the gratification is
argues, engage the viewer in     "Grand Theft Auto III"--that      ever going to show."
a way that television rarely     is, the informal guides that
has in the past:                 break down the games and          At the same time, players
                                 help players navigate their       are required to manage a
When we watch these              complexities--is    fifty-three   dizzying       array       of
shows, the part of our brain     thousand words long, about        information and options.
that monitors the emotional      the length of his book. The       The game presents the
lives of the people around       contemporary video game           player with a series of
us--the part that tracks         involves a fully realized         puzzles, and you can't
subtle shifts in intonation      imaginary world, dense with       succeed at the game simply
and gesture and facial           detail    and     levels     of   by solving the puzzles one at
expression--scrutinizes the      complexity.                       a time. You have to craft a
action on the screen, looking                                      longer-term strategy, in
for clues. . . . The phrase      Indeed, video games are not       order    to    juggle    and
"Monday-morning                  games in the sense of those       coördinate        competing
interests. In denigrating the   vivid,        three-dimensional     example     of    collateral
video game, Johnson argues,     world filled with moving            learning, which is no less
we have confused it with        images and musical sound-           important.
other phenomena in teen-        scapes,       navigated      and
age life, like multitasking--   controlled      with    complex     Being      "smart"    involves
simultaneously      e-mailing   muscular movements--books           facility in both kinds of
and listening to music and      are simply a barren string of       thinking--the kind of fluid
talking on the telephone and    words on the page. . . .            problem       solving      that
surfing the Internet. Playing   Books are also tragically           matters in things like video
a video game is, in fact, an    isolating. While games have         games and I.Q. tests, but
exercise in "constructing the   for many years engaged the          also the kind of crystallized
proper hierarchy of tasks       young in complex social             knowledge that comes from
and moving through the          relationships with their peers,     explicit      learning.       If
tasks     in   the    correct   building and exploring worlds       Johnson's book has a flaw, it
sequence," he writes. "It's     together, books force the child     is that he sometimes speaks
about finding order and         to sequester him or herself in      of     our    culture    being
meaning in the world, and       a quiet space, shut off from        "smarter" when he's really
making decisions that help      interaction       with      other   referring just to that fluid
create that order."             children.... But perhaps the        problem-solving        facility.
                                most dangerous property of          When it comes to the other
2.                              these books is the fact that        kind of intelligence, it is not
                                they follow a fixed linear path.    clear at all what kind of
It doesn't seem right, of       You can't control their             progress we are making, as
course, that watching "24"      narratives in any fashion--you      anyone who has read, say,
or playing a video game         simply sit back and have the        the Gettysburg Address
could be as important           story dictated to you. . . . This   alongside any Presidential
cognitively as reading a        risks instilling a general          speech from the past twenty
book. Isn't the extraordinary   passivity in our children,          years can attest. The real
success of the "Harry Potter"   making them feel as though          question is what the right
novels better news for the      they're powerless to change         balance of these two forms
culture than the equivalent     their circumstances. Reading        of intelligence might look
success of "Grand Theft         is not an active, participatory     like. "Everything Bad Is
Auto      III"?     Johnson's   process; it's a submissive one.     Good for You" doesn't
response is to imagine what                                         answer that question. But
cultural critics might have     He's joking, of course, but         Johnson does something
said had video games been       only in part. The point is that     nearly as important, which
invented hundreds of years      books and video games               is to remind us that we
ago, and only recently had      represent two very different        shouldn't fall into the trap of
something called the book       kinds of learning. When you         thinking      that     explicit
been marketed aggressively      read a biology textbook, the        learning is the only kind of
to children:                    content of what you read is         learning that matters.
                                what matters. Reading is a
Reading books chronically       form of explicit learning.          In recent years, for example,
understimulates the senses.     When you play a video game,         a number of elementary
Unlike the longstanding         the value is in how it makes        schools have phased out or
tradition of gameplaying--      you think. Video games are an       reduced recess and replaced
which engages the child in a                                        it with extra math or English
instruction. This is the         faith in the value of the things
triumph of the explicit over     that children would otherwise
the collateral. After all,       be doing with their time. They
recess is "play" for a ten-      could go out for a walk, and
year-old in precisely the        get some exercise; they could
sense       that     Johnson     spend time with their peers,
describes video games as         and reap the rewards of
play for an adolescent: an       friendship.     Or,     Johnson
unstructured environment         suggests, they could be
that requires the child          playing a video game, and
actively to intervene, to look   giving their minds a rigorous
for the hidden logic, to find    workout.
order and meaning in chaos.
                                 © 2005 Malcolm Gladwell
One of the ongoing debates
in       the     educational
community, similarly, is
over the value of homework.
Meta-analysis of hundreds
of studies done on the
effects of homework shows
that the evidence supporting
the practice is, at best,
modest. Homework seems
to be most useful in high
school and for subjects like
math. At the elementary-
school level, homework
seems to be of marginal or
no academic value. Its effect
on discipline and personal
responsibility is unproved.
And the causal relation
between          high-school
homework and achievement
is unclear: it hasn't been
firmly established whether
spending more time on
homework in high school
makes you a better student
or whether better students,
finding homework more
pleasurable, spend more
time doing it. So why, as a
society, are we so enamored
of    homework?      Perhaps
because we have so little