Everything Bad Is Good for You - Hardcover

Johnson, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713998024 ISBN 13: 9780713998023

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2005

Synopsis

Popular culture is often seen as nothing more than the production of endless entertainment video games, computer games, hand-held games, movies and music on computers. It's common currency to talk about the declining standards of today's culture to say that modern media is dumbing us down. In this complex and tautly written book, Steven Johnson presents a radical alternative: mass culture is making us smarter by consistently demanding more of our brains. So whether you watch The Sopranos or Survivor, turn on and tune in.

About this title

Review

In his fourth book, Everything Bad Is Good for You, iconoclastic science writer Steven Johnson (who used himself as a test subject for the latest neurological technology in his last book, Mind Wide Open) takes on one of the most widely held preconceptions of the postmodern world--the belief that video games, television shows, and other forms of popular entertainment are detrimental to Americans' cognitive and moral development. Everything Good builds a case to the contrary that is engaging, thorough, and ultimately convincing.

The heart of Johnson's argument is something called the Sleeper Curve--a universe of popular entertainment that trends, intellectually speaking, ever upward, so that today's pop-culture consumer has to do more "cognitive work"--making snap decisions and coming up with long-term strategies in role-playing video games, for example, or mastering new virtual environments on the Internet-- than ever before. Johnson makes a compelling case that even today's least nutritional TV junk food–the Joe Millionaires and Survivors so commonly derided as evidence of America's cultural decline--is more complex and stimulating, in terms of plot complexity and the amount of external information viewers need to understand them, than the Love Boats and I Love Lucys that preceded it. When it comes to television, even (perhaps especially) crappy television, Johnson argues, "the content is less interesting than the cognitive work the show elicits from your mind."
Johnson's work has been controversial, as befits a writer willing to challenge wisdom so conventional it has ossified into accepted truth. But even the most skeptical readers should be captivated by the intriguing questions Johnson raises, whether or not they choose to accept his answers. --Erica C. Barnett

About the Author

Steven Johnson is the author of the US bestseller Mind Wide Open. His previous book, Emergence, was shortlisted for the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. Johnson's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's and The Guardian, as well as on the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He also writes for Discover magazine and Wired.com, and was co-founder of the award-winning websites FEED and Plastic.com. He teaches at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and has degrees in Semiotics and English Literature from Brown and Columbia Universities.

Edition details

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0713998024
• ISBN 13: 9780713998023
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1