I just finished the book Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson, and (SURPRISE!) I really liked it. I know it's somewhat old news (I think it was published in 2005), but that's not going to stop me from blabbing on about it as if I am on the cutting edge of this kind of crap.
The premise of the book is that pop culture (in particular, video games, television, and the internet) is making us smarter, and not dumber. Now, clearly you're reading a review by someone with a raging pop culture habit, so grain of salt and all that. HOWEVER. I do think he has some excellent points. First of all, IQs have been on the rise for the past 50 years, and that is a fact, Jack. Not average IQ scores, which are normalized to create a constant 100 average, but real IQs in terms of the cognitive abilities of the average person. So, someone with a 100 IQ in 1950 might score only 80 or 90 on today's test. Now, maybe I live under some kind of Texas rock, but I didn't know this. In fact, it seems suspiciously like The Man is trying to tell us the opposite. Like how dumb and lazy and brain-dead we all are, at least according to TheWorldIsGoingToHellInAHandbasket.com. This is a separate pet peeve of mine, WHICH I WILL NO DOUBT GET INTO AT A LATER DATE, so I'll just leave it at that for now.
Without ruining the entire book for you (oh, you didn't actually want to READ it, did you?) a couple of tidbits I enjoyed:
On Video Games: a comparison of a spatial relations/reasoning type exam question and the popular (back in the day) game Tetris
On Television: a graphical representation of the complexity of a show like Hill Street Blues and a show like 24 or Lost (and this change in the span of 20 years or less!)
On the Internet: a discussion of the whole "the sky is falling because no one READS anymore" argument, which completely ignores the amount of reading done through email and the internet
There were plenty of other things in the book that made me think "hey, that's true!". Like how most of us laugh off the fact that our 4 year old nephew can program the remote control and fix our printer. Maybe WE'RE not getting dumber (well, speak for yourself, I guess), THEY are just getting smarter at stuff like technological problem solving.
So, what I am really trying to say here is that LOST RULES! And also, that I am a choir just waiting to be preached to on this topic.
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I completely agree. My kids are WAY smarter than I was, and I was no dummy. Wait, I'm talking like I'm dead. My kids are smarter than I AM, and I AM no dummy. Where you got the perfect Verbal on the SAT, I got the perfect Analytical on the GRE. So logic is my forte, and yet I often find myself standing open-mouthed and dumbfounded at the perfect unassailable logic of my four-year-old's arguments against whatever it is I say.
Ha! I see that I said I am no dummy, like there was some evidence somewhere supporting that statement. You'll just have to take my word for it.
Any book that supports the fact that I let my kids play endless computer games to keep them out of my hair gets my vote!
Lori-Then you should definitely read this book. He is particularly evangelical about the video games. It's clear that he's a gamer himself, but the arguments are still pretty compelling. Plus, there IS actually scientific evidence supporting some of the positive effects of video games.
It is so nice to hear about a book that tells us that we aren't all ruining our minds with everything we do. It's so easy to be so desolate about everything that's wrong with the world, and while reports like this aren't excuses to ignore problems that need fixing, it's good to be reminded that people have been waiting for the end of the world for centuries, and that it's really easy to blow things out of proportion.
Also, I loved Tetris. I miss that game. Clearly, this is why I'm now so talented when it comes to parallel parking.
IAWTP
Except for maybe TV. It's definitely true that there are TV shows that are smarter than ones from 20 years ago. But it's also definitely true that there are TV shows that are FAR FAR DUMBER than ones from 20 years ago. Has the average gone up or down?
More to the point, both video games and the internet require engagement and interaction. TV doesn't, at least not all of it.
DU-Regarding tv, the author argues that the average HAS gone up. He even argues that some of the "dumbest" tv shows today (e.g. reality tv), increase our EMOTIONAL intelligence, which I agree is pushing it a little, but there you have it.
THIS PLEASES ME.
I've been ignoring the whole "interaction with computers is rotting our brains! our BRAINNNNNNS!!" thing as just the latest edition of "When _I_ was kid, we'd play all day with a twig and a piece of twine!"
I also ignore the "toys that use batteries are inherently less Good than toys made of wood" idea.
Also, I suddenly wondered the other day what it is about the reading thing. I DO read, and way more than average even not counting email/blogs, so I've been praised a LOT for how awesome I am, and I've been going along assuming I am in fact awesome. But then I thought, "...Wait. Why is reading so good? What makes it better than, say, watching TV?" Reading is still mostly entertainment, at least for me. It's not like I'm reading _Our Nation and its Boring Policies_ or _Complex Useless Concepts_.
I just finished "The Ghost Map" by the same author. It is really well written, but really different--telling the story of the men who tracked down the cause of the great cholera epidemic in London. So the guy definitely has range.
Lost does rule! And can I tell you (once I have stopped slobbering on this keyboard), how excited I am for the new Fall shows to begin???
Oh Lost how lost I have been without thee... (OMG such a dork!)
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