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04/24/2005 Archived Entry: "Media Mind"

Media Mind
Enjoyed Steven Johnson's NY Times Magazine piece "Watching TV Makes You Smarter". Johnson notes how the multi-threaded TV narrative becomes internalized as a way to make meaning, and thus, is part of a rise in cognitive ability (as opposed to the usual complaints about TV and literacy). We construct ideas as multi-threaded experiences. Of course.
There's no way to prove that TV makes you dumber or smarter, but the idea of internalizing, or "interiorizing" as Ong says, is what is important here. We have media minds. In many ways, the media mind is a filmic mind or a remix mind. It constructs possibilities and narratives which resist sequential thought or linear reasoning. It also relies heavily on borrowing (appropriation). As is often the case, a non-academic (though he does have a B.A. in English, I believe) has a point worth expanding upon, and academia shrugs its shoulders. There is much to work with here in the Johnson article. I look forward to seeing the book.
Literacy studies resists the idea of the media mind because it disrupts the tradition of story telling as linear thread - which most literacy studies depend on in order to demonstrate literacy acquisition. Composition studies resists the media mind because it disrupts notions of authenticity, morals, structure, and other treasured pastimes. The media mind is also not about content (violence, misogyny) because all media content displays these items. Instead, the media mind works from form and structure, from media (first person shooters – emphasis on the first person; multi-threaded plots – emphasis on constructing more than one point; i.e., the anti-thesis).
The result of failing to recognize any of this? More disgruntledness in the composition world. More of "Our students can't write" statements. More, "how do you catch plagiarism" dead end concerns. We could also claim that these disgruntled statements are narcissistic, but I'll leave that idea for now. Instead, we see the complaints as refusal to get involved. As long as the field complains, it doesn't need to address cultural shift. Of course, the so-called critical thinking valued deeply in the field is not engaged. So no one bothers to look around and see how this cycle of complaints gets us nowhere and creates false images of writing. Regardless, the complaints are valuable excuse for rejecting the rise of the media mind.