As someone who tries hard to avoid the typical biases one generation has against the next, I’ve been amused by the minor flap over The Atlantic’s recent cover story – Is Google Making us Stoopid? – and the more recent AP story on studies released at the American Psychological Association convention that suggest video games can actually make people not only smarter, but also better laproscopic surgeons (providing, I would imagine, that you were a pretty good one to start with). This polarizing argument is not new.
It seems a good percentage of every generation looks disapprovingly at the one that follows as a bunch of slack-jawed simpletons for whom life is too easy and recreation too mindless. In fact, in his video response to the cover story, Google Chairman-CEO Eric Schmidt said the criticism leveled against his company is the same as that which was leveled against color TV and MTV when they were in their infancy. (I’m not sure Schmidt’s quite making his point – A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila making kids smarter? It’s a stretch.) He is however, onto something. Back in 2005, the science writer Steven Johnson put out a book called: Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making us Smarter. His argument was that by requiring more engagement from the audience and telling more intricate stories – a mode of storytelling pioneered by Hill Street Blues – TV is much more than a passive medium. It’s engaging – and engaging is the byword for today’s marketers.
The point I’m trying to make is this – each generation grows up in a different communication ecosystem and it’s easy to bring an outdated point of view about what each medium means to our discussions about how to reach and engage them effectively. People who’ve never played a role-playing or multi-player game don’t understand the problem-solving that goes into it. Besides, Google, MTV and, well, Tila Tequila are part of today’s media landscape as are blogs, IM, wikis, Facebook, MySpace, World of Warcraft and GTA 4. Good, bad; smart, dumb? Not for me to say. Interesting? No doubt.
Comments (1)
David Wolman responded to the recent outcry in Wired magazine this month. I love his last remarks:
"It's naive to think that the digital age will magically remedy stupidity. We need better schools as well as a renewed commitment to reason and scientific rigor so that people can distinguish knowledge from garbage. The Web is not an obstacle in this project. It's an unparalleled tool for generating, finding, and sharing sound information. What's moronic is to assume that it hurts us more than it helps."
You can read the article in its entirety here: http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-09/st_essay
Posted by Elisa C. Thomas on August 26, 2008 6:44 PM