Well said, Andrew.

I remember hearing that when people watch TV, their brain activity flatlines and they become highly open to suggestion. I don't think the same thing happened with online video. You have a window for the video, but there is competing interest going on with ads and comments, usually.

I personally think that the poor quality and "lowest common denominator" focus of television programming shouldn't be allowed. Congress used to take issue with the potential for television to do harm or unduly influence people.

It can also be a form of good and solid public service by having the capacity to warn us of impending disaster, informing us quickly and thoroughly of important issues regarding our own and future well-being, and even educating our children and ourselves with quality programming.

That if falls shorter and shorter of these goals every year is a testament to the influence of the corporate interests that run it in the interests of profit.

The internet, at least, while crowded with misinformation, includes the tools for people to verify information with ease, or at least get a different slant on it to create some balance. Sites like this one, while it is labeled a progressive site, usually provides plenty of differing viewpoints on important issues.

I would hope that if a Democrat gets into the White House that they would appoint Michael J. Copps or Jonathan S. Adelstein
as head Commissioner at the FCC. Their voices have been in the minority for the past 8 years, but they both seem to get that television is a public service and should act like one.

Does Jacoby consider the Flynn Effect? The typically rising scores on IQ tests is explained by the need to periodically set a baseline of shared knowledge. When some things are known only by the educated and intellectually curious they serve as indicators of general intelligence. But over time these things become general background knowledge, so tests have to be updated to prevent a false (?) impression of rising IQ.

Are we smarter, in knowing these things, or not? Matter of definition.

That said, I find most video a waste of bandwidth, but make an exception for the thumbnail-size YouTube and TPM-TV clips.

The difference between Internet video and television can be seen in this year's presidential campaign, too. Before television, politicians were great orators. People got most of their information from print, but speeches were hugely valued. But with television, it soon became all about sound-bites. That promoted simplistic solutions to complex problems.

Could Barack Obama be a serious presidential candidate if it was still just television? Doubtful. His points are more thoughtful, more in depth than a simple slogan or sound-bite. We're back to great orators again - perhaps even more than before - because of Internet video. This is the first campaign to really take advantage of the possibilities, and I think it's demonstrating what a difference the medium can make. After suffering through decades of simplistic sound-bites, I'm REALLY glad to see the change.

Put another way: I haven't missed a post on TPM in years. I've missed every TPMtv episode ever make, exept maybe two.

I haven't read Susan Jacoby's book -- just reviews, though I might read it, because in some measure I tend to agree with her thesis. Reason -- more than 20 years teaching at the College level mostly 18-22 year olds who take a History course, but don't have the skills to read a map, and also lack a sense of History. I normally started a first class with a little survey, asking students to discriminate between Civil War and Civil Rights Movement, Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, First and Second World War -- and normally half of my students just couldn't do it. I don't think this is the fault of technology -- TV or electronic media, but somewhere something has gone all wrong. For instance about four days after 9/11 the NYTimes sent interviewers out with blank outline maps of the world, and asked people to point to Afghanistan. They counted pointing to Pakistan and Iran as correct inasmuch as the respondant had the general idea. But only 17% could identify the general geographic region. Interesting, because for a few days TV had been running much archived video about Afghanistan, complete with quasi maps.

The fault, I believe is totally basic. You actually have to teach children how to read a map, which is, afterall, a symbol set denoting elements of space and place, and it isn't all that much different from teaching children to read using the alphabet -- again a symbol set for words that in turn have meaning. For some reason, (and I would suggest it was false cost control) that set of lessons got dropped from many school curriculum -- just as History as identifiable benchmarks in time got lost in a Social Science curriculum that placed higher value on "relevance" or "identity" than it did on the narrative. So when children who have been misserved by such curriculum land in College, and as part of distribution requirements need to take a History Course, those of us who taught them are forced to adapt -- how to teach young adults who never were exposed to learning basic skills, and using them to make appropriate deductions.

Yes, Google Maps are great -- use them all the time personally, but I also still use my large atlas for which I paid nearly $200 and highly value, simply because when reading about a region having a high quality map with symbol sets all over it that I was long ago taught to read, is valuable. Right now I am in the midst of a new book on the Partition of India in 1947, and while the author supplied several useful outline maps tied to the text, the large map with irrigation canals, railroads, paved roads and all is much more useful. But without the very early skills training in how to read maps -- the point of having them is lost, and I doubt if it makes much difference whether you display them on a screen, or clear off space for opening up a big atlas.

Great post, Andrew.

I think Steven Johnson, in Everything Bad Is Good For You, refutes Jacoby's line of argumentation most effectively.

It's not that we're not learning, it's just that we're learning differently. We're learning experientially, like we do in video games. We're learning in networks, like we do on sites life Facebook.

Different isn't bad.

Andrew, Sorry to respond on the wrong post, but there are problems with your other, excellent posting asking for everyone's ideas about John McCain. It doesn't allow me to see all the posts, and it ends without allowing for comments (too many comments?)

The old TPM let you program in as many comments as you wanted, but there is evidently a limit here. Not only that, but if you have reached your limit, there is no place to post a comment either.

If I happen to remember where I posted this comment I will come back and see what you say, but if I don't, I don't have any way to track it either, since my most recent comments (the last time I looked) were from 3 years ago.

One thing I noted from other posters in the McCain opne-forum, and I know it has been brought up many times, is that conversation is pretty much dead with this new system. I am sorry to see that, because it was such a big part of what TPM Cafe used to be. There were several comments that I wanted to respond to, but I knew it would make me start all over again reading comments, even if I could get back, and if I just wanted to make a general comment there was no way to do it becaue this "Post a Comment" section isn't there.

Sorry to keep complaining, but you had such a good thing going....sorry to see it gone

Jan