After reading Everything Bad Is Good For You by Steven Johnson, I am no longer ashamed that I loved every episode of Average Joe. (That was the reality dating show where they found a beauty queen who said personality was more important than looks and gave her 20 average-looking guys to choose from.) However, I am ashamed that I do not have the brainpower to follow Survivor. Sigh. Perhaps Ben and Simon will be smart enough.
Johnson's argument is that it takes more brainpower to enjoy current pop culture than it did to enjoy pop culture twenty or thirty years ago. He takes on the assumption that pop culture is dumbing down, and turns it on its head.
Before he gets going, he separates out the morality of current pop culture from the complexity of pop culture. This book doesn't address the increased violence, sex and profanity in entertainment.
TV is getting smarter. Really. All you have to do is watch a show from the Golden Age of television (the 60s), or from the stupidity nadir of television (the 70s), and compare it to today's shows. Today's plots have so many interlocking relationships and plot lines that missing an episode requires a visit to one of the many fan sites to find out what happened because the producers don't design shows to fit in one episode. They design shows that take entire seasons to unravel.
While a viewer could sit down in front of Starsky and Hutch, watch just one episode, and be able to follow the plot, anyone who tries to watch just one episode of ER or Lost is going to spend the entire episode wondering what's happening. Older tv shows kept the viewer interested with the mystery of how the show will end. Current tv shows keep the viewer interested with the mystery of what the heck is going on right now. TV shows are a puzzle, not just braindead entertainment.
Speaking of puzzles, the ultimate pop culture puzzles are computer games. Johnson says that saying computer games teach good hand-eye coordination is like saying reading Charles Dickens teaches good spelling. That minor skill is so incidental to what you're actually learning that it's laughable to even count it as a benefit. Today's complex computer games, as opposed to PacMan, require a player to solve an unending series of puzzles. Far from being instant gratification, they often involve a player in frustrating problems without giving the player all the rules, and require the player to figure out the rules in order to solve the problems. That's high-level thinking.
That brings us to reality shows. Know what he says reality shows are? They're not documentaries, and they're certainly not reality. Reality TV shows based on strategy (like Survivor, not Fear Factor) are structured like computer games. There's a highly artificial environment. The players don't know all the rules at the outset but learn them as they go. Players have to make frequent decisions with both short-term and long-term goals in mind. And you can get killed (voted off) no matter how well you think you're doing.
The dating reality shows are like high school social networks. Ick. I didn't like high school, and much of the reason for that was because I couldn't read social network cues. I didn't know who liked who, or why, and what I was supposed to do about it. But thriving in a complex social network like high school is actually a real-life skill because work environments and families are also complex social networks. A person's emotional IQ is as important for success and happiness as a strictly cognitive IQ.
Johnson does briefly address several counter-arguments. The most important one is the social interaction question. It is all too easy to spend time developing cognitive skills and ignore emotional skills that are necessary when you turn the screen off. As with everything else, pop culture should be enjoyed in moderation. He also talked about why, if we are getting smarter, kids test lower in school.
But the book did give a whole new way to look at what tv and computer games are really doing to our minds. And I didn't even get to his thoughts about the Internet. It's pretty obvious the Internet demands more thinking from us, though, so that section was the least revolutionary for me.
The book is highly readable. This is the same author who wrote The Ghost Map. It was a fast and interesting read.
5 comments:
I think the kids are learning a lot more than we did in school. I think if they are testing lower it is because we are expecting more of them. It is easy to test high when stuff is easy, and harder when it is more difficult. I know that I wasn't in geometry at 13. In fact I know that pre-algebra wasn't even offered until 7th grade for the smarties.
You don't have enough brainpower to follow Survivor (Join the club btw) but you can read a totally intellectual book and write an excellent review on it (and many others!) That is so impressive to me! I can't read a book unless-it is filled with dialogue, I literally skim the boring description paragraphs and hope that the story is told through the characters conversations!! I'm not intellectual enough to read intellectual books. (can you tell I'm tired?)
It seems to me that those who tend to crticize media and entertainment options often don't know enough about it to make that critique. I was definitely a "no mindless video games" kind of guy before I went to work for a video game company. After that experience, and actually seeing how my son interacted with Yu-Gi-Oh!, and realizing my son was learning about and retaining information about probability and statistics when he was eight, plus how he would pore over books that were filled with arcane numbers and attribute details, my opinion got changed pretty quickly on that front :).
I totally agree with the sentiments expressed so far. I grew up in the 60's and the premise of a good tv show was simply entertainment. The sitcoms were what life was 'supposed to be'. Thank Heavens things progressed. I remember MASH was so amazing because they actually tackled difficult social problems at the time...I hadn't thought of survivor in that sense of the work and it makes me appreciate the whole genre alot more. Kris talks about how pre-algebra wasn't taught until 7th grade in her day. I was placed in pre-algebra (with the smarties of that day) in the NINTH grade. Each generation is learning more younger.
I have been know to complain about how difficult it must be for teachers trying to keep the attention of todays youngsters who have grown up with constant movies and action and game boys and complete entertainment. I had not followed that thought through with the idea of 'probability and statistics'and simple brain power that each of today's youngsters are developing and using at such a young age. If we can keep this going and growing just think of the geniuses we will have in the next generation or two. WOW!
Thanks for a good book review and thanks for giving me hope for the future generations.
ps - nance - I am with you 100% on reading and understanding intellectual books and not only when I am tired!
Thank you. I think things are different for each person. Video games are/were a distraction for me, once I start playing, I don't want to stop and don't get anything else done. My sister and one cousin, on the other hand, were both greatly helped by getting a Nintendo (the original one). Their attention spans were increased and their focus on their homework improved their grades. I have a hard time reading non-fiction books, but usually get through after a long period of time. I can say that I would probably never try reading this book, but am glad that you have read it and shared your thoughts with us. As far as TV, I watch way too much and I've even cut back. I think there is a great responsibility for those that watch tv or any other form of entertainment to knwo when enough is enough AND, maybe more importantly, keep TRUE reality straight from tv/video game reality.
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