Steven Johnson The Sleeping Curve Summary

Steven Johnson, believes that popular culture is making us imperceptibly but tenacious and a little smarter every day, also that trend, demonstrated by the "tests" of intelligence. Johnson calls it “the sleeping curve” where he assumes that mass culture is increasing in complexity gradually because of interrelated factors: natural appetites of the brain, the economic system of the cultural development, the cultural industry, and evolving technological platforms.

Steven Johnson argues that popular culture today is more complex and challenging than ever and requires us to cognitive tasks that we never had been pushed so far all the classical and popular culture like in this time. His arguments are simple and they go against the opinion of most

This is not going to makes us dumber as they used to think like in the past people believe. On the contrary this is culture, the new culture, since the brain is increasingly complex, and requires a different media infrastructure to sustain the extensive development of our times, he called to this effect the sleeping curve. And is gradually increasing in complexity because of interrelated factors; to natural appetites of the brain, the system of the cultural industry and the evolving technology platforms, and throughout the book is giving arguments and examples that confirm his thesis, some more successes and other profiled sometimes just relying on third-party studies and other comparisons and analysis of the different products of popular culture. Thus in the world of the series of television, he analyze this complexity

2013. P125) media is shaping today's youth no just with violence, gender stereotyping, and sexual promiscuities, and this becomes difficult to interpret what is the true influence of media.

A few years ago Johnson explains that the television were too easy to understand and predictable. All the programs were focused on just one storyline, but actually all new series and programs on the television are more complex, cognitive and more demanding, now the protagonist of the shows on television have a constant change, and they have more storylines, and this change has occurred because the audience has become more critical.

TV now serves us to think, to analyze what kind of thinking must be exerted to make sense of a cultural experience. That the television has put more pressure on our cognitive abilities; the complexity has grown by three elements, multiple accounts, multiple accusations, and social networks.

Then he also includes video games and how they have had a bigger and greater evolution, because the video gamers are now being challenged to make a greater effort due to the lack of instructions and the new structure of