[Sigia-l] "Sleeping Curve"

[Livia Labate]

> today's prime-time shows are giving you a cognitive workout
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/magazine/24TV.html

"I believe that the Sleeper Curve is the single most important new force
altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe it is
largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing
them down. And yet you almost never hear this story in popular accounts of
today's media."

This has been said about video games for years. TV as well. What's the big
find here? Still, many people (parents mainly) treat video games (and TV)
as a negative influence on their kids. This answers the question for me:

"For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows
a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards,
presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big
media companies try to give the masses what they want."

"presumably because the masses want dumb, simple pleasures". I'm still
waiting to hear where the media companies get this feedback from the
masses that they want dumb simple pleasures. If your research is skewed
and your product makes assumptions such as these, it is clearly not going
to deliver what people really want. And if these are always the basic
assumptions (that people want the lowest common denominator), they are
always going to perceive the product (TV, video games, etc) as bad,
because these products are trying to fulfill something that is not
reflective of what this audience wants.

Know your audience, duh. It's becoming increasingly annoying to read
things like that where statements are made as if they have discovered
something new and unique, when in fact it only reflects a deficiency in
the current understanding. Everyone knows or is aware that you are suppose
to understand your audience to create appropriate services/products, but
it doesn't mean they actually *do* understand their audience. If they did,
there wouldn't be a lowest common denominator, there wouldn't be
generalist assumptions about the audience and none of this would be
surprising.

--

On a related topic, why have cognitive sciences become so fashionable
recently? The author Steven Johnson (http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com)
who is publishing a book that expands on this article called 'Everything
Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us
Smarter' - seems to be doing the same as Malcolm Gladwell
(http://www.gladwell.com) of 'Tipping Point' and 'Blink' fame.

It's become harder to tell the good from the bad when it comes to learning
and keeping up to date with finidings in this field. If you read the above
and then read things like Barry Schwartz's Paradox of Choice
(http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bschwar1/) and George Lakoff's Metaphors
we Live by
(http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/lingdept/Current/people/facpages/lakoffg.html)
it becomes clear that the folk who are trully championing the field don't
make statements like this article does because it's much too early to make
inferences.

Any suggestions on how to keep up with which are the authoritative sources
and which are the cognitive fashionistas?

LL
http://livlab.com

cranky note: NYtimes.com is geting worse with time. A 5-page article with
inline ads and ads in between pages as you paginate? geesh...