everything bad is good for you

just finished reading Everything Bad is Good for You by Stephen Johnson. very well done - an interesting, easy read, and a message with which our cultural elites should come to grips.

fully half of the book is an apologetic for video games. i must admit i checked out of the video game world just as it got good, according to him. i really dug the linear-ness of super mario and super ultra mario or whatever came next. although i was the reigning queen of mario-cart in my day (more 3D than the others), my expertise (and interest) stopped when you had to start wandering around in a 360 world with no clear-cut goal, relying on trial and error and the benevolence of strangers to give you tips. it’s now those incredibly complicated, simulated worlds that challenge greater realms of problem solving and cognitive abilities. i certainly believe it. it won’t make me go out and buy a sony playstation (old-dog syndrome), but i’ll concede that the overall effect is a net positive.

i also appreciate that he dispels the notions that gamers have short attention spans, that they are socially stunted, and that they learn a violence from them that is manifested in real life. of course the gaming kids feel triumphantly vindicated by his thesis, like those over at Joystiq.

johnson keeps a blog, as he mentions in the book. he recently and endearingly posted about his obsessive preoccupation with the climb of this latest on the bestseller list. he also appeared on the daily show, and was cute in recording that too.

businessweek, however, is not impressed:

A former English PhD candidate and co-founder of the groundbreaking Webzine Feed, Johnson is most successful in demonstrating that popular culture has grown more complex and intellectually challenging over the past 30 years. But Everything Bad Is Good for You overstates its case that we’re smarter as a result. Worse, Johnson soft-pedals or ignores some of the main drawbacks of pop culture.

maybe because he’s merely a bucket tossed against the tidal waves of criticism of popular culture. he saw an opportunity to counter some of that, and succeeded.

more whining from businessweek:

And what about the downside of gorging on techno-culture? There’s less time for reading, playing outside, or socializing. Some teachers say kids are suffering from overstimulation, which stifles the imagination.

that’s right, timmy. stop writing complex, detailed logs of the intricate game-world you’ve been engrossed in. go outside and play with sticks. that’s what i did when i was a kid, so i know it’s gotta be better for you than this rubbish.

perhaps kids are stifled in imagination when they’re in the horrendously understimulating, time-wasting, structured world of formal education aimed at the lowest common denominators in the room.

could it be that everything BUT ‘education’ as we know it is making us smarter?

P.S. Julian Sanchez mentions the book in the context of music.