Trademark

As I continue reading “Everything Bad Is Good For You”, Johnson keeps on surprising me on his arguments as to why my generation’s pop culture is so amazing. I thought that it was going to become repetitive, but I was wrong. He makes me think about what is going around in my generation, and how valuable some of those things are to my life, without me even realizing.

I just finished the chapter on “Film” and it was interesting how Johnson says that we also do cognitive work while watching films, even children films like Finding Nemo. When one is watching Finding Nemo one “has to keep track of almost twenty unique personalities….. as well as the different story arcs…and where the child’s mind is concerned he’s just watching a movie, but each viewing is training him or her to hold those multiple trends in consciousness, a kind of mental calisthenics.” (130)

This proves why when I leave the movie theater after watching a suspense movie, or an action movie, I always end up with a head ache because my mind was literally going around in circles. I was trying to find out who killed who, or who really is the bad guy. As I get older the type of movies I can watch start getting more complicated and analytical, but I am able to watch them because I have been “trained” with the easy movies, such as Finding Nemo.

I wonder which are the movies that are going to transend into the future. Just like we study Shakespears plays, people 300 years from now could be studying movies instead of books. Are there any hidden movies that one day are going to become trademarks of our time? 

Visual Vocabulary:

Psychometrics:

the science of measuring mental capacities and processes 

Fynn Effect:

The substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day.

Back In The 1980's

As mentioned in my previous blog: “Internet Connect”, internet has been a revolutionary resource that has broadened peoples connections all around the world, but most importantly it is the home of most of the information that exists, or has existed in our time. As I read, I thought about how internet can contain so much information. Internet becomes a colloquial tool, that I never thought about its significance, but now that I do it is mind blowing.

Internet was created around the 1980’s and now I am viewing internet as a teenager would in those times. It’s incredible. How is it possible that whatever I want to find is located in this place, that I can’t even touch, called the internet. Its another world. How can all the information be saved in one place, but at the same time we don’t see it? I don’t understand how people can speak badly of something so incredible and unreal. Now I understand why my grandmother sometimes can’t understand how google works. But now that I think about it neither can I. I know how to follow the steps to find the information, but I have no clue, how this thing called Google “which has fulfilled the original dream of digital machines becoming extensions of our memory” (124) can bring all the information related to a topic that I just type in the search bar. Who is doing the searching? This is just giving me a headache.

But what mostly gives me a headache is college applications. Just a half an hour ago I was with my father at the dinner table. We were having a discussion about how stressed I was due to the college applications. My father can’t seem to understand why I hate this time of the year. He thinks applying to college is really easy, that one doesn’t have to study for the SAT, and that the essay is just a paper you right in three hours instead of drafting it five times. He said that in his time of applying to college people weren’t as stressed about this process as now a days because they didn’t know as much about the colleges, or admittance rates. People just applied and that was it.

My father is right, it’s not that people now are smarter that makes getting into college so difficult, it’s that the amount of information on this process is so overwhelming that people don’t know what to do with it, so we all go crazy. Instead, if we were in the 80’s we’d probably be stressing about if our transcripts arrived to the colleges that we were applying to, because they were sent by boat.

Internet has brought amazing things to our world, I don’t know what I would be doing without it, but I do think that before things were simpler. Less stressful. I wish I was in the 80’s right now, before internet.

Visual Vocabulary:

Mesmerizing:

capture the complete attention of (someone); transfix.

Intricate:

very complicated or detailed.

The Power of Education

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VufWDM-geUQ

Internet Connect

As I continue to read “Everything Bad is Good For You” I have distinguished the pattern that Johnson finds a way to rebuttal every argument that is pressed down on resources that our popular culture uses, such as the ones that I have mentioned in my past blogs: TV and Videogames. This may sound dumb, because the title of the book is “Everything Bad is Good For You”, which is an indicator that Johnson will be taking the good out of everything, but still its really neat.

Anyway, Johnson has demonstrated that the resources such as TV and video games aren’t only to entertain us, they actually have a cognitive value. When I reached the chapter about internet, I was eager to find out what he had to say on this subject, given that it is the one I use the most.

Now in my generation, the internet is something common that brings “Google to be our culture’s principal of knowing about itself.”(121) I don’t know where I would be without Google. I guess I’d be stuck in a library for six hours trying to find information about how World War II affected the German economy, or something simple like definitions, or diets to lose weight in four days.

As I read I thought about how much I use the internet each day. I use it to find addresses, definitions, facts, pictures, blogs, go on Facebook, Whatsapp and probably more things that I don’t realize. Our generation is the one that gets everything fast. You can reserve a table at a restaurant, order food, clothes, and more in just a matter of seconds. We haven’t experienced what it is to wait, because most things that we want come to us right away. But not knowing how to wait is a negative aspect because when it comes to waiting I drive myself crazy. For instance, waiting for my SAT scores, or application decisions. These things take time and I have no control over it, which sucks.

Johnson says that the “rise of the internet has challenged our minds in three fundamental ways: by virtue of being participatory, by forcing users to learn new interfaces, and by creating new channels of social interaction.” I couldn’t agree with him more. When there are new programs we are forced to learn them, for example the new IOS7. If we don’t learn how to manage these interfaces we will be left behind. Social networks are present all the time, and are used constantly. Facebook, Whatsapp, MSN, BBM, IM, Snapchat, and Circle are all used to communicate with people from all around the world. With just pressing the button “send” I can communicate with a friend in Abu Dabi. To us it seems crazy, but for some reason my grandmother can’t seem to understand this concept.

Although Internet may have its flaws such as “identity fraud”, all of its advancements opaque the negative aspects of it and makes us concentrate on the good things. Internet has been a revolutionary tool that the whole world uses, which has brought the world to connect.

Visual Vocabulary:

Sheaf: 

a bundle of grain stalks laid lengthwise and tied together after reaping

Xeroxed:

A copy producing process

Innocuous:

Not harmful or offensive

An Intelligent Show

As I read the chapter on television in "Everything Bad Is Good For You" I reflected on my childhood years. When I was around five years old, I discovered the magic of television. Barney, Teletubies, Mickey, Magic Dragons, The Cumfy Couch, were my best friends. If I was a "good girl" I would get the privilege of seeing them again and again, but when I wasnt, the severist and worst punishment of all would be to hear the words "te quedaste sin television." It was like a dagger in my chest, the pain never ended, until I was allowed to watch TV once more. 

Now that I am older I realize that my parents weren't bright in giving me that punishment. "Cristina without TV "meant that they had to deal with me all day. I was a very hiper kid growing up, so just telling me to go to my room didn't cut it. I would start screaming and probably hurt myself or break something. The only viable activities to keep me civilized were playing outside, or watching TV. But I couldn't go out and play without my mom, and many times she was busy or didn't feel like going out, so putting me infront of a TV was the perfect solution. 

When I was infront of that screen it was if I had summerged in the show and lived in another world. I didn't hear anything around me, it was just me and Barney. That is the power that television had on me, it made me another person. I could sit there for hours and I wouldn't get hungry. It was great for me and for everyone around me. 

As I read this chapter, Johnson says interesting things about how TV shows are managed and how there exists "two types".  He says that "some narratives force you to do work and make sense of them, while others just let you settle in the couch and zone out" (63) but I believe that already a show that makes you zone out is completely intelligent. It depends on the viewer. This might sound ridiculous, but Modern Family can easily compete with Homeland, although they are completely different shows beacuse they both have the same power to captivate the audience. One will do it by making them laugh and the other by making them crazy with all the twist and turns of the plot. As I continue reading Jhonson talks about "intelligent shows" and others that "dont cause any intellectual work", but the truth is is that they all do. I am doing cognitive work as I watch Modern family because I have to catch the jokes and think about what Cam is going to do next.  It's the same way that in Homeland I make inferences about who is the bad guy. 

So I conclude that an intelligent show can also be Barney, because it has the power of obtaining childrens attention, and allowing parents to take a breathe. 

Visual Vocabulary:

Cunning: 

Having or showing skill in achieving one's ends by deceit or evasion.

















Imminent:

About to happen.



















Amnesaic:

Person who suffers from partial or total loss of memory.