A review of this — 47 weeks ago
In Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson argues that popular culture – TV, games, the Internet and films – aren’t dumbing us down, quite the opposite in fact. He analyses current incarnations of these four types of media to show that they are getting progressively more challenging as the years go by. The second part of the book argues that the cognitive challenges are translating into real benefit to society as a whole.
The book is well-argued and I’ll think twice about criticising people for watching too much TV and films from now on (no argument from me regarding the benefits of the Internet and computer games!), but I won’t be doing more TV and film watching myself. Even if they are cognitively challenging, the fact that I can’t control the rate at which I imbibe the information is a deterrent for me from watching TV and films – I almost invariably start feeling bored.
I think that personally I place more of a premium on the knowledge I can gain than on the cognitive challenge, which is why I let myself watch foreign language shows more often than English ones, because I’m “practising” – also the rate of information inhalation is probably about right then. I also like watching shows like House that trigger me to find out more about medicine.
In summary, a cogent analysis of popular culture that goes against almost all others, which uniformly condemn its dumbing-down effects. Good for kids to point to, to argue that the time they spend watching TV and films isn’t being wasted. Parents, make sure to agree but get back at them by stipulating they watch/play the more cognitively challenging instances of each medium rather than the ones that are truly dumb! But then, the human mind, as Johnson suggests, seeks out challenge, so maybe your teenager is okay the way he is. I think his suggestion for a cognitive-challenge rating system (rather than sex-and-violence) is a good one though!
