The Flynn Effect

[peritonlogon]

the main reason you're objecting to my statement is because the terms are very murky...'abstract problem sloving and symbolic thinking' are not all that different from 'group learning' and 'mass consciousness' when considered in context. Usually ways of explaining things and understanding things simplify and make intuitive certain ideas or phenomena. This is an example of 'symbolic thinking and abstract problem solving' changing en mass, but could just as easily because called group learing or mass consciousness. The difference is mostly semantic.

And, people dealing with VCRs and the Internet and using both, as well as some other new ones, as tools to expedite the learning process, is an example of media as an 'extention of man.'

The difference is more than semantic. You're hypothesizing that there is a huge, fuzzy, ethereal connection between all people that causes them to learn at the same time. I'm saying that there is a common external, physical cause that explains the observed phenomenon without resort to supernatural processes.