Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually… (2005)

How the brain works, why reading is not necessarily good for you, and video games bad for you. A strong argument for the value of gaming in developing analytical skill. ( )

This book was interesting, in some ways--some of his logic is sound, some isn't, and he doesn't really provide a lot of supporting evidence. The end result is that if you believe the premise--that modern video games, television, movies, etc. actually encourage more thought than those of the '80s and previous--you'll believe the book, but if you don't agree with the premise, you probably won't be convinced. Worth a read so you can use it as a citation in arguments with technophobes and other anti-technology folks. ( )

Everything Bad makes several worthwhile and interesting points, but rambles mostly without focus in what should have been a long magazine article. (I felt the same way about Curt Anderson's _The Long Tail_.) ( )

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/algae-2012-02.html#everything-bad ( )

When my grandson was 3 years old, he asked his parents to teach him to read, and by the time he turned 4 he could read remarkably well. So why was the little guy so eager to learn how to read? Because he wanted to play Zoo Tycoon, a computer game that requires some reading skills. His older sister could play the game, and he wanted to play, too.

This came to mind while reading "Everything Bad Is Good for You" by Steven Johnson. The book makes a convincing case that such technological entertainments as television, electronic games, movies and the Internet, all often criticized for their negative impact on younger generations, are actually making people smarter.

The key, according to Johnson, lies in their increasing complexity. Compare an episode of "The Sopranos" with an episode of "Dragnet," and you'll see there is no comparison. There are more characters, more story lines and more subtleties in the newer show. Similarly, compare "The Simpsons" with "The Flintstones" or "Seinfeld" with "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." It's not that the older shows were less entertaining, but they were less complex. They did not make viewers work as hard to follow everything or to catch all the cultural references or the references to previous episodes. You simply had to watch the older shows; you have to think to enjoy many of the shows now on the air. Even reality programs like "Survivor" require more mental engagement than older shows like "The Price Is Right."

Similarly, the most popular games among young people are those that take many hours to master. Kids who may balk at the problem-solving required by their math teachers will happily devote an entire evening to solving a problem posed by a game like SimCity.

Watching "Finding Nemo" may not be as intellectually rewarding as reading "Moby Dick," but compared with watching "Bambi" or some other animated children's movie from an earlier generation, today's kids are getting an intellectual feast.

Thanks to blogs and a variety of interactive Web sites, young people are writing more — and perhaps reading more — than ever before.

Modern technology does not seem to be making smart people smarter, Johnson says. Rather, it is making average people smarter. For evidence, he points to gradually rising IQs. Johnson still believes very much in the power of books. He chose to make his arguments in a book, not on his blog, after all. He is simply saying that popular culture, despite all the criticism it gets, has actually been beneficial, especially when compared against the popular culture of previous generations.

Sometimes I think my grandson spends too much time playing electronic games. Then I remember it was a game that gave him the incentive to learn to read as a 3-year-old. ( )