History Homework #14

Personally, both of these texts go against most of what the older generation believes in. The typical thought is always books and writing are the pathway to success and television and video games are the key to failure. In both of these texts, the main point or points is that video games and television are really not so bad, and we have evidence to back it up. This, in a sense goes back to the start of the enlightenment period. John Locke and Thomas Hobbes questioned theories that the people were born to believe. Although at first considered controversial, people became very interested in these thoughts and questions posed by the "enlightened philosophes"
The argument is how the stimulation provided by video games and television is rewarding to the brain. He goes deeper into the differences in digital entertainment of television and video games. For example on television we just lay there and attempt to follow the story board that is appearing on the screen where in most cases video games you are more in involved and faced with "decision making" within the game.
He begins to talk about how children that are raised and brought up reading will later in life spend more of there free time reading because they are so accustomed to it. I can personally say a lot of my friends parents got them video games as a way of preventing boredom because the parent themselves could not provide entertainment with and for their child.
This text i just read is a breath of fresh air away from all the stuff we are filled with in our brain by outside sources. Because it is so different and because it is a original thought it makes it more appealing to me. Michael Moores new movie called Capitalism: a love story is very appealing to the mass audience because they know before even going into the movie that it will be a contradiction to what we hear. This is how i feel reading this text. Even if the argument were to be faulty it would still come off as interesting to me because it is a brand new idea. The way it is written is very convincing and provides good examples for almost every argument stated which makes it, at least to me, seem more reliable because some form of backup or background is provided.
This text in most ways is a complete opposite to feed. Although it can be argued against, Feed is more about how our society is already or will in future be failing completely, this text is more about how maybe our society and all this technology is not such a terrible thing after all. Maybe we are going overboard when we say we are all heading for doom and our society is so dumb. My grandma always tells me how dumb our generation is with our texting or computer usage but meanwhile she doesnt have the knowledge or patience to operate a computer or cellphone. We naturally critique what is different and what we are not used to seeing. "Toben" is telling us in a story how crazy our society is becoming while Stevin Berlin Johnson is providing the good aspects of digital technology and how it stimulates our minds constantly regardless if is through television or the stimulation provided in video games.