The title alone made me want to
read this book. The full title is Everything bad is good for you: How
today's popular culture is actually making us smarter. Steven Johnson
is a well known social commentator with other books like The Ghost
Map about the cholera epidemic in London and his latest Future Perfect about
how people were using decentralized peer
networks to solve problems.
In Everything bad is good
for you Steven Johnson is looking at popular culture like computer and
video games and television. His findings are fascinating. As time has gone on
all of these popular media have become more sophisticated, demanding
greater levels of intellectual involvement from their consumers and
audiences. So what has been popularly described as creating a dumber society is
in fact - and Johnson provides compelling evidence to prove his case, doing the
opposite.
I really liked his
references to the importance of reading as part of popular culture. "We
should all encourage our kids to read more, to develop a comfort with and an
appetite for reading. What are the rewards of reading, exactly? Broadly
speaking they fall into two categories: the information conveyed by the book,
and the mental work you have to do to process and store that information. When
we encourage kids to read for pleasure, we're generally doing so because of the
mental exercise involved." (pg 21-22)
He also acknowledges the negative influences
of gaming and television watching but on the whole his message is very positive
and optimistic. We are all getting smarter not dumber from enjoying these forms
of media.