The Pieces of the Sleeper Curve

Steven Johnson believes that everything in that media such as, video games, television, film, and the internet, that we are taught that is bad for us, is actually making us smarter. He wrote a book called, “Everything Bad Is Good for You” that explains his theory on the fact that everything bad might really be good for you. He goes through each section and gives many examples for why each one is good for you rather than bad. He brings all of his examples to a thing called “The Sleeper Curve.”

His argument for video games versus reading a book is: “Reading books chronically inderstimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying-which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements” (pg.19). Johnson goes on to talk about probing and telescoping and how each person playing the game has to figure out where to go, what to do, and what the next thing after that is to do.

Johnson says that in television and film, “popular television shows-and to a slightly lesser extent, popular films-have also increased the cognitive work they demand from their audience, exercising the mind in ways that would have been unheard of thirty years ago” (pg.62). Johnson goes on to talk about the reasons why for the newer shows being more complex; the use of multiple threading; where now the shows have so many different things going on in one episode; character maps and social networks; Johnson gives an example of, “Black Market Baby, the primary structure of the narrative is a double plot: the competition between the two brothers to have a baby and give the family patriarch a long-overdue grandchild” (pg.110). A lot of newer shows are now having so many more plots in just one episode. Also he gives the example of the disappearance of flashing arrows. Now, it is not easy for us to see what is coming next in the show or film.

Johnsons next “crucial piece in the puzzle of the Sleeper Curve” (pg.116) is the internet. He says, “Not just because the online world offers resources that help sustain more complex programming in other media, but because the process of acclimating to the new reality of networked communications has had a salutary effect on our minds” (pg.116).

The thought of someone finally telling people that video games, television, film, and the internet are actually making us smarter could definitely cause some dispute. Obviously being a teenager, where the internet and television is what I do in my spare time, I love to finally hear that it is actually making me smarter. I agree with what Johnson is saying. He is not meaning to say that reading isn’t making us smarter, but he is saying that all the other “pieces” are too. He says, “But I want to be clear about one thing: The Sleeper Curve does not mean that Survivor will someday be viewed as our Heart of Darkness, or Finding Nemo our Moby Dick. The conventional wisdom the Sleeper Curve undermines is not the premise that mass culture pales in comparison with High Art in its aesthetic and intellectual riches” (pg.132).