Thursday, October 3, 2013

Steven Johnson VS Dana Stevens




        Watching TV Makes you smarter by Steven Johnson tells about how TV is good for you and helps you understand the world around. People are getting smart by watching TV's shows drama like "The Sopranos", "24", and many more. He describes that watching TV shows can bring knowledge in different genres in drama, action, romantic, horror, social life, sci-fi, mystery, supernatural, and a lot more. His argument is that TV brings good understanding the sequences and relation that has brought in our societal. "The intelligence arrives fully formed in the words and actions of the characters on-screen." This states that each character bring intelligence about the world and use action to entertain the audience to understand societal and get the viewers to learn the information that is given to them. Johnson describes TV is good for you and can help learn about the topic your research on history or something else that the teacher has given the assignment which you have to work.

            Thinking outside the Idiot Box (Does watching TV Make You Smarter? Duh….I dunno) by Dana Stevens tells how TV does make you smarter but plan dumb by watching TV everyday which does not give people intelligence but instead make people stupid by watching and not forcing on the real world. Her argument is that TV is virus; that cause people to watch more TV and not realizing it that is bad for them. “Watching TV teaches you to watch more TV” this statement shows that watching TV does not give you knowledge but gives you the craving to watch more TV while it detects your memories of education and your plans of what were you suppose to do in this hour like hanging with friends at the bar or telling your wife the great new that you have been promoted in your job. Stevens describes Johnson’s article how he mistaking the meaning of intelligence and given the people the wrong idea of watching TV makes you smart which Johnson quoted “You no more challenge your mind by watching these intelligent shows than you challenge your body watching Monday Night Football…..The intellectual work is happening on-screen, not off” TV does not make people smarter by watching TV every day, it only gives children the wrong idea of learning education on TV and not about to learn it in school from real experiences in the child life of learning. TV only give answer and not able to find the answers by hand or study it for memory.   
            I agree with Johnson’s statement “is the kind of thinking you have to do to make sense of a cultural experience” and Steven ‘statement “a truth already grasped by the makers of children’s programming like Teletubbies, which is essentially a tutorial instructing toddlers in the basic of vegging out” They prove good points that TV has good connections to our world but not so good on given Children’s education by watching TV all day. Yes, it can be useful and learn more about the socially that we live in but can damage the human brain and can make people blind by watching too much TV.   

5 comments:

  1. Good job - I think you're really getting at something important in the last sentence of your second to last paragraph. The two authors have different ideas of what intelligence means. Can you be more specific? How is Johnson measuring intelligence and why do you disagree?

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  2. Steven Johnson the author of watching television make us smarter argues an elaborate his point using shows such as 24, Saparons violent Johnson argues of their violence but also how informative 24 is when they aired 44 minutes a real time hour Johnson states there was 16 minutes of commercial there were 21 distinct character nine primary narrative threads wind there way through the 44 minutes.
    From the passage Johnson states draw a map of all those intersecting plots and personalities and you get structure hes simply saying you would have to use your brain in order to keep up with the different charter and threads . Johnson in a way seems to be contradicting himself Johnson talks about video games, violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms turn out to be nutritional after all. he talks about the sleeper curve on page 279 also the shows that teaches us that smoking or gratuitous violence is bad for us but while those that thunder against teen pregnancies or intolerance have a positive role in society.pg. 279. but this is not so hes simply proving his argument of how television makes us smarter.

    Johnson speaks of televised intelligence the Mary Tyler Moore show Murphy brown Fraiser the intelligence arrived fully formed and how you can learn from these shows also football games he says challenge your mind by watching these intelligent shows than you challenge your body watching Monday night foot ball the intellectual work is happening on screen not off ill say true to that.
    Dana Stevens the author off thinking outside the idiot box beg to differ with johnson stevens stevens say johnson s claim for tele vision as a toll for brain enhancement seems deeply and halariously bogus.
    My opinion on this is is watching to much televisin can be good and at he same time bad for us we should monitor what us children watch and be carefull what the media says is eductional based on both author this might not allways be true.

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  3. Hi Carolyn - You're on to something here: I think what you're identifying as a contradiction is somethign we'll talk about more: a kind of "concession" where the author acknolwedges PART of the other side. See how you could make what you say here clearer by talking about what does Johnson acknolwedge as the problems of TV and what does he insist on as the good effects? Try to be sure the different points will be clear to an outside reader. For example, why does he talk about teen pregnancies? How is it connected (according to him)?

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  4. I begin by saying Johnson claiming that the usual counterargument is what media have lost in moral clarity, the have gained in realism. For example, the real word doesn’t come in a nicely packaged and we should watch entertainment instead. He admits that the reason TV makes us smarter because in the past we had worked under the assumption that mass culture follows p path declining steadily toward lowest common standards, but Steven has a different idea which she acknowledge us to think outside the box and she mentioned that not only Johnson fail to account for the impact of the 16 min worth of commercials that interrupt any given episode and how these shows have a negative effect on us because it teaches us to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting, and social relationship, so TV doesn’t make us smarter.

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  5. Hi Abdullah - Your first sentence is a good example of something we were talking about in class on Thursday: do you see how most of that sentence is actually exact words from the passage? You're blending your words with his and the result is confusing. For now, while we're not using direct citation, try to put the idea completely in your own words. Try NOT looking at the text while you do it.

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