Feeding My Ignorance

I often watch TV series/programmes about subjects that I have a particular interest in and, inevitably, those of which I have most knowledge always seem to come across as superficial or shallow or just plain dumbed down.  I wonder to what extent that is a problem for the media generally.

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The BBC series, The Code, that I mentioned in the previous post was a good example of a series that did little to enlighten me, whilst still being entertaining.

There was little in the series that I would argue with, but at the same time I came away with a feeling that it left a lot out - which of course it did, you couldn't possibly cover the subject completely in three hours.  Obviously, as we progressed through the series the concepts became increasingly 'difficult' and I wonder whether at times it was on the verge of succumbing to the problem of "a little knowledge being a dangerous thing".

Take the example shown of "the wisdom of crowds" - there was nothing particulalry wrong about the example, but the uninformed person could imagine that we could go out on the street, gather together a sufficiently large crowd, ask them a question and the average answer would prove to be the correct one - that is (to me at least) patently ridiculous, but taken at face value it was what the programme suggested.

Perhaps the sort of person who would watch this programme is sufficiently savvy to work that out - but if that is so, why was the programme seemingly aimed at those who are not that savvy?  A bit of a paradox for the programme makers I guess.

The issues of the need for 'the crowd' to be sufficiently knowledgeable to attempt to answer the question and the need for them to be shielded from knowing what everyone else is answering (amongst others) were not surfaced at all.

The same sort of criticism could be levelled at other things shown, but I am not writing this to criticise the programme, but to discuss whether this is something which is to be accepted as part and parcel of 'popular' TV or not.

We live in an age where "information overload" has become a fact of life.  Worse, we live in an age where everyone thinks that because they have access to the information they therefore 'know' about it.  TV programmes such as this provide 'bite sized chunks' of populist science for the uninitiated to devour.  This is, inherently, a good thing - as long as those bite sized chunks are sufficiently well wrapped  and show the downside as well as the upside - because there is usually two sides.

So - what do I think?  Well, I think that in ALL information dissemination it is essential to give a balanced view - not just propaganda.  Wehn it comes to scientific stuff such as was o this particular programme then it is going to be hard to strike a balance between too much and too little information.  Personally, I think they got it a little wrong in The Code because I could see people watching that and really believing every word that Prof. Sautoy was saying.  Nothing wrong with that, but they really needed to also think about what the implications were and what he was not saying as well and I don't think that is something that the general viewing public would have done.