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Everything Bad is Good for You
clampe writes "
In Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson tries to convince the reader that video games, television and the Internet are good for us, despite critics who talk about "vast Wastelands" and "infantilized societies". The book raises interesting questions, but in the end is a lightweight analysis that is better for engendering sound bites on NPR and The Daily Show than for convincing serious readers." Read on for Clampes' review.
Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter
author
Steven Johnson
pages
238
publisher
Riverhead Books
rating
7
reviewer
clampe
ISBN
1-57322-307-7
summary
Popular culture may have a role in making people smarter
In "Everything Bad Is Good For You" Johnson argues that major forms of entertainment like television, video games, films and the Internet have grown increasingly complex over the past several decades, which corresponds to an increase in average IQ scores in the U.S.
The introduction to the book summarizes cultural criticisms about the growing banality of entertainment, focusing mostly on television. Johnson uses this springboard to state his thesis: that popular culture is not only growing more complex, but that the complexity is making consumers of pop culture more intelligent.
The main content of the book is divided into two main parts, with the first arguing that video games, television, the Internet and movies have grown more complex in recent years, and the second part outlining the relationship between those forms of entertainment and increased intelligence.
Johnson claims that the complexity of problem solving and exploration involved in current video games help players learn critical thinking skills. He amusingly asks the readers to consider a world where video games have been around for centuries and a new technology called the book is all the rage. The cultural critics currently bagging on video games would claim books are static, isolating and understimulating. Johnson is the first to admit he's usng hyperbole here, and books obviously have value, but the point is made. Video games, he points out, cannot be directly compared to books in terms of the types of intelligence they encourage. Video games, according to Johnson, are valuable because they force players to make choices, solve problems, keep track of varied situations and in some cases cooperate with others.
Criticizing television is a popular straw man activity for cultural critics. The boob-tube, the idiot box, the vast wasteland. Johnson argues that while the general thinking is TV has gotten worse over the past 30 years, it in fact has become much better. Current shows have more complex narratives, trust viewers to catch subtle references and have denser social networks. Johnson compares "Dragnet" to "Starsky and Hutch" to "Hill Street Blues" to "The Sopranos" to show the evolving complexity of narratives in television dramas. Even reality TV, the easiest target around, is more complex compared to it's historical antecedent, the game show.
The Internet is valuable in three ways according to Johnson: by virtue of being participatory, by forcing users to learn new interfaces and by creating new channels for social interaction. Johnson provides a laundry list of online interactions that bring people together and make them smarter.
Johnson gives a "qualified yes" to the proposition that movies have undergone the same transformation as television. His main evidence is the increase in the number of characters to be found in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy compared to the original "Star Wars" trilogy. The other main evidence is the development of a sub-genre of films he calls "mind-benders" typified by Kaufman works like "Being John Malkovich".
In Part 2 of the book, Johnson associates research that shows American IQ scores have risen over the past several decades (the Flynn Effect) with the increased complexity of popular culture. He looks at alternative explanations for this trend, such as nutrition and education, dismissing each in favor of the popular culture explanation.
The Good:
There is something about people who say they never watch TV that makes me want to punch them. I'm also a little tired of having to explain at dinner parties and family gatherings that my playing video games does not mean I went ahead with the lobotomy. Johnson seems to have tapped into a real feeling that television and games are not the worthless pastimes that popular media decries them as. The book raises interesting and important questions, while providing a tonic against cultural nay-sayers.
As in previous works like Emergence, Johnson has an engaging and approachable writing style. He blends personal experience and decent explanations of the literature to craft his arguments in an engaging manner.
The Bad:
The main problem with this book is the strength of the claims made in Part 2. Human intelligence is a complex mechanism affected by a blend of genetic and environmental factors. It is possible that games and television play a role in positively affecting intelligence, but Johnson has not strongly made that case here. The data he presents, while intriguing, are correlational at best and arbitrary at worst. Johnson is actually careful to qualify the populations he considers to be affected by popular culture, and the kinds of intelligence he is talking about. However, the arguments still hang together on fragile strings of "It could be" and "it's not like because of this".
For example, it could be that his selection of television shows to compare biases his analysis. What Johnson says about the increased complexity of television narratives seems intuitively true, but there's danger in the kind of analysis where shows are plucked with no clear selection mechanism from the past and we draw such sweeping conclusions from them.
There are also several alternative explanations to the trends pointed out in this book. For example, let's assume that there is more worthwhile television than there used to be. However, the real comparison should be between worthwhile television compared over the total amount of television available. Given the explosion of television programming since Starsky and Hutch, it's not surprising that better shows are available. Another explanation might be the maturation of the media. Literature is the gold standard here to some extent, but the novel is an older media form that has had many opportunities to attract good authors than television and video games. Over the centuries that we've had novels, we accumulated some talented authors, and those luminaries attract other talented individuals. Television and video games are a newer media, and consequently haven't accumulated as many giants. Some of Johnson's examples of the new complexity in television and film are really examples of a couple of special individuals, like Aaron Sorkin and Charlie Kaufman, attracted to an increasingly mature art form.
The above counter-examples show some of the dangers of this case based argumentation at the center of this book. By using pseudo-case studies, there isn't really a basis by which the data presented by Johnson is stronger than "because I said so." Work that would help his argument has been done in communication studies, developmental psychology and cognitive psychology, but those fields are largely ignored here. Instead, cranky old guys like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman are set up as straw men. This disconnect reminds of how well Howard Rheingold incorporates current research into popular press efforts like this book. Johnson does use some decent resources like James Paul Gee, and seems to be widely read in several cogent fields, but it doesn't seem reflected as well as might be expected in the actual text.
The sections on the Internet and movies are clumsy and seem almost to be afterthoughts to the other sections. The section on video games is stronger, and the book would have been better by concentrating on that element of the story alone. May not have had as cool a title though.
Final recommendation:
This book is fun, light reading. It's not bad as a catalyst for discussion at parties, but as a serious polemic argument it doesn't hold up. Still, the book is a good airplane read, or something for the hammock. But you're better off playing a video game."
You can purchase Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
In "Everything Bad Is Good For You" Johnson argues that major forms of entertainment like television, video games, films and the Internet have grown increasingly complex over the past several decades, which corresponds to an increase in average IQ scores in the U.S.
The introduction to the book summarizes cultural criticisms about the growing banality of entertainment, focusing mostly on television. Johnson uses this springboard to state his thesis: that popular culture is not only growing more complex, but that the complexity is making consumers of pop culture more intelligent.
The main content of the book is divided into two main parts, with the first arguing that video games, television, the Internet and movies have grown more complex in recent years, and the second part outlining the relationship between those forms of entertainment and increased intelligence.
Johnson claims that the complexity of problem solving and exploration involved in current video games help players learn critical thinking skills. He amusingly asks the readers to consider a world where video games have been around for centuries and a new technology called the book is all the rage. The cultural critics currently bagging on video games would claim books are static, isolating and understimulating. Johnson is the first to admit he's usng hyperbole here, and books obviously have value, but the point is made. Video games, he points out, cannot be directly compared to books in terms of the types of intelligence they encourage. Video games, according to Johnson, are valuable because they force players to make choices, solve problems, keep track of varied situations and in some cases cooperate with others.
Criticizing television is a popular straw man activity for cultural critics. The boob-tube, the idiot box, the vast wasteland. Johnson argues that while the general thinking is TV has gotten worse over the past 30 years, it in fact has become much better. Current shows have more complex narratives, trust viewers to catch subtle references and have denser social networks. Johnson compares "Dragnet" to "Starsky and Hutch" to "Hill Street Blues" to "The Sopranos" to show the evolving complexity of narratives in television dramas. Even reality TV, the easiest target around, is more complex compared to it's historical antecedent, the game show.
The Internet is valuable in three ways according to Johnson: by virtue of being participatory, by forcing users to learn new interfaces and by creating new channels for social interaction. Johnson provides a laundry list of online interactions that bring people together and make them smarter.
Johnson gives a "qualified yes" to the proposition that movies have undergone the same transformation as television. His main evidence is the increase in the number of characters to be found in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy compared to the original "Star Wars" trilogy. The other main evidence is the development of a sub-genre of films he calls "mind-benders" typified by Kaufman works like "Being John Malkovich".
In Part 2 of the book, Johnson associates research that shows American IQ scores have risen over the past several decades (the Flynn Effect) with the increased complexity of popular culture. He looks at alternative explanations for this trend, such as nutrition and education, dismissing each in favor of the popular culture explanation.
The Good:
There is something about people who say they never watch TV that makes me want to punch them. I'm also a little tired of having to explain at dinner parties and family gatherings that my playing video games does not mean I went ahead with the lobotomy. Johnson seems to have tapped into a real feeling that television and games are not the worthless pastimes that popular media decries them as. The book raises interesting and important questions, while providing a tonic against cultural nay-sayers.
As in previous works like Emergence, Johnson has an engaging and approachable writing style. He blends personal experience and decent explanations of the literature to craft his arguments in an engaging manner.
The Bad:
The main problem with this book is the strength of the claims made in Part 2. Human intelligence is a complex mechanism affected by a blend of genetic and environmental factors. It is possible that games and television play a role in positively affecting intelligence, but Johnson has not strongly made that case here. The data he presents, while intriguing, are correlational at best and arbitrary at worst. Johnson is actually careful to qualify the populations he considers to be affected by popular culture, and the kinds of intelligence he is talking about. However, the arguments still hang together on fragile strings of "It could be" and "it's not like because of this".
For example, it could be that his selection of television shows to compare biases his analysis. What Johnson says about the increased complexity of television narratives seems intuitively true, but there's danger in the kind of analysis where shows are plucked with no clear selection mechanism from the past and we draw such sweeping conclusions from them.
There are also several alternative explanations to the trends pointed out in this book. For example, let's assume that there is more worthwhile television than there used to be. However, the real comparison should be between worthwhile television compared over the total amount of television available. Given the explosion of television programming since Starsky and Hutch, it's not surprising that better shows are available. Another explanation might be the maturation of the media. Literature is the gold standard here to some extent, but the novel is an older media form that has had many opportunities to attract good authors than television and video games. Over the centuries that we've had novels, we accumulated some talented authors, and those luminaries attract other talented individuals. Television and video games are a newer media, and consequently haven't accumulated as many giants. Some of Johnson's examples of the new complexity in television and film are really examples of a couple of special individuals, like Aaron Sorkin and Charlie Kaufman, attracted to an increasingly mature art form.
The above counter-examples show some of the dangers of this case based argumentation at the center of this book. By using pseudo-case studies, there isn't really a basis by which the data presented by Johnson is stronger than "because I said so." Work that would help his argument has been done in communication studies, developmental psychology and cognitive psychology, but those fields are largely ignored here. Instead, cranky old guys like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman are set up as straw men. This disconnect reminds of how well Howard Rheingold incorporates current research into popular press efforts like this book. Johnson does use some decent resources like James Paul Gee, and seems to be widely read in several cogent fields, but it doesn't seem reflected as well as might be expected in the actual text.
The sections on the Internet and movies are clumsy and seem almost to be afterthoughts to the other sections. The section on video games is stronger, and the book would have been better by concentrating on that element of the story alone. May not have had as cool a title though.
Final recommendation:
This book is fun, light reading. It's not bad as a catalyst for discussion at parties, but as a serious polemic argument it doesn't hold up. Still, the book is a good airplane read, or something for the hammock. But you're better off playing a video game."
You can purchase Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Turn on television, flip channels, find nothing but crap, turn it off and read a book.
Turn on radio, flip channels, find nothing but crap, turn it off and play my musical instrument.
It's kind of like:
Go to a burger stand, eat burger and shake, get sick, live off soup and water for a week.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Six months ago I bought a computer game that has been broken in nearly every sense (fun, speed, function) for $50. A couple of patches have been offered for the game that barely touch the problems, and a patch is going to be offered "real soon now" for at least two months.
The reaction in the gaming forum I visit to see if the patch is finished is absolutely and totally depressing to me. Any suggestion that this is was a ripoff is immediately torn apart by forum members, a couple of which have actually bought brand new computers to try to get their computers to run this game.
So I'm going to go ahead and disagree that critical thinking skills are being enhanced by video games. Every indication I see is that as fun as they are they're like a digital form of huffing glue for "game enthusiasts".
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Everything our parents say is good is bad for you. Sun. Milk. Red meat. College.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Whatever, I'm waiting for the TV movie version of this book before I make a decision.
But seriously, I think this guy's major points are proven right here on Slashdot. A high percentage of the readers of Slashdot, relative to the general population, are video game players. I would also say that compared to other message boards I see around the internet there are more intelligent posts here. Of course my post rating threshold may just be set too high.
I read this book while vacationing in the woods outside of Yosemite. Pretty fitting place to read it, actually. I posted a review to my blog (shameless pimpin') and was pretty shocked when Steven Johnson himself (or a poser, I suppose) posted a complimentary comment. Gotta love the web.
Anyway, I thought his point about gaming being brain candy, and the stimulating complexity of modern TV programming were well done -- and a welcome antidote to CW. But he gets way ahead of himself on a lot of points. And he skims blithely past a lot of important elements of modern culture.
As he said, as a cultural critic, he gets to do that. The hard work of researching and analyzing the points he makes is left to academics and other experts. Which is good, because it allows him to put his ideas into a nice, light, provocative, fun little book.
I think I'd have less faith in humanity if articulate, educated folks were filling out job applications for fast food chains.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
Did he ever mention that the shows of today which are more complex, were made by people who grew up with less "complex" shows in their time?
People have hostile reactions when you say you don't watch TV because they assume that you're trying to prove something, or show how cool you are, or convince them of some political analysis. When the subject comes up and I say "No, I haven't seen that commercial - I don't watch TV," many people respond as though I had said "TV is for the weak-minded. You watch it too much."
Why do people interpret a simple statement about personal behavior as a loaded criticism? I suspect it's because on some level, they feel sort of guilty and/or criticize their own TV-watching habits, and are therefore quick to interpret discussion on the subject to be directed towards them.
I get the same thing when I say "Oh, the soup has bacon in it? No thanks, I don't eat meat." Suddenly I'm subjected to an extended monologue on why they eat meat and how they don't really eat as much as most people...
dude, eat what you want, watch what you want - I don't care, I just don't want to adopt all your habits so that you can feel comfortable.
So, you are saying that the formal grammar of today is the same as that of Churchill? There are several classes of new gramatical constructs that are in use today. Perhaps not in scientific papers, but in the vast majority of written communication, the language has most definitely evolved. For a good (and humorous!) look at some of the new classes of words in use, I recommend this short essay, which is a amature linguist's view on modern slang. The biggest drive for language today that I see is the need to communicate larger and larger volumes of information more quickly. The use of acronyms and abbreviations shorten the language. Unforunately, most of our brains haven't yet caught up with our newfound ability to say so much so quickly, so occasionally a pause is required. This is where the "APMs" that our friend was talking about come into play -- a person may say "like", or "um", or any number of other things to fill the gaps while his or her brain turns over the next thought.
A number of people decry language no longer being an 'artform', something to be molded for great beauty. There will always be the wordsmiths who produce language akin to art. But since language is no longer a province of the elite, since (in the first world) the people are finally participiating in matters of import, the language will evolve for utility, and not beauty. I, for one, am fine with that.
His point (to the degree that he had one) is that Google shows a bias towards commerce. If I asked you to tell me about flowers, you'd give me something more like a dictionary or encyclopedia definition, but Google gives me places to buy them.
That comes as no surprise to you, of course, and you (the intelligent Slashdotter) would have no trouble finding out what you wanted to know by giving Google just a bit of context. The only people asking about "flowers" in the most general sense are third-graders writing reports. Everybody else wants to know something more specific: where to get them, how to plant them, when they bloom, etc.
Google's bias, implicit in the links model because web pages are supported by money, is for the commerial links in the absence of any other information. Which you already knew. So I can't tell you why he's bothering to write about it, except to tell the non-slashdotters of the world that Google can't read your mind and it can be misleading. Duh.
Any suggestions on some good programs?
My biggest problem with TV is that they don't (generally) set out to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end; rather, they have a strong beginning, then make the middle up as they go along, extending it for as long as it's making money, then they (MAYBE) tack on a craptastic ending when it's no longer profitable, often failing to wrap up the original issues from the beginning of the show.
I have found very few shows that do not follow this formula. "Babylon 5" comes to mind as one that set out to tell a story, though that got all f'd up when they thought it was going to get cancelled at the end of season 3 (it was supposed to be a 4-season story arch) and had to rush things, then had to go back in season 4 and tie up loose ends, making it kind of sloppy.
I'm watching "The Prisoner" now (thank Jeebus for Bittorrent!), and it's OK so far. Nice and short at 17 episodes, I'm on 11 now.
I'm a reluctant fan of anime, but I find myself watching a lot of it just because they often create shows with the plot for the series scripted out before they begin (or at least the story is consistant and concise enough to make it seem that way), like Cowboy Bebop, Serial Experiments Lain, etc. I dislike the ones that run seemingly endlessly, even if they're OK for a little while, like Inuyasha--just like I shy away from shows in the US that I like but that are going on too long to possibly stay good, like The X-Files. I'll probably stop watching Battlestar Galactica if it goes beyond season 4.
Any suggestions? Any shows with decent plot consistancy and a somewhat literary plot arch, that I havn't mentioned?