Everything Bad is Good for You

by Steven Johnson

Everything Bad is Good for You

book data

730 ratings, 3.53 average rating, 149 reviews (more data...)

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published

May 2nd 2006 (first published 2005) by Riverhead Trade

binding

Paperback, 272 pages

isbn

1594481946 (isbn13: 9781594481949)

description

In his fourth book, Everything Bad Is Good for You, iconoclastic science writer Steven Johnson (who used himself as a test subject for the late...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1144)

All ratings | 5 stars (103) | 4 stars (271) | 3 stars (273) | 2 stars (70) | 1 star (15) | avg 3.53

all | this edition

Arlynda

Arlynda rated it:

12/10/07

bookshelves: book-club

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: no one.

This book is so poorly written that I don't know where to begin. By the end of the introduction, Steven Johnson has already told us that he doesn't care about morals, and apparently neither should we. Well, I do. Knowledge with out serious thought about the implications of misuse of such knowledge is worse than ignorance. I think that nuclear technology is amazing, but I don't think that we should make bombs out of it and use them. Morals helps us to decide how to use technology. I think t...more

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3 comments

Tracey

Tracey rated it:

(review of isbn 1573223077)

12/19/07

bookshelves: libraryread

Read in July, 2006

First heard about this on NPR's Morning Edition in May; then Johnson appeared on The Daily Show early in June. I'd read his Mind Wide Open a month or two ago & really enjoyed it, so I put this book on hold at the library.

Johnson's basic theory is that popular culture has gotten more complex and challenging over the last few decades, and our consumption of such has assisted us with problem solving and dealing with complex relations...more

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Elise

Elise rated it:

07/29/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: Mom, Dad, gamers and couch potatoes

What's nice about Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good For You is that you can finish it in several short sittings. Three cheers for that. The book is quick and succinct, an easy but thoughtful and though-provoking read.

Johnson argues that over the last three decades, popular culture has become more complex, sophisticated and challenging, in spite of everybody's eagerness to dub it "lowbrow fluff." That is, for all the crap they get, programs on "the idiot box" ...more

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Isaiah

Isaiah rated it:

06/14/07

recommends it for: those who will believe anything they want to be true

This book makes the following its central thesis:
Because popular media (TV, video games, movies, etc.) are becoming more complex, and requiring more cognitive work to process them, they are making us smarter. This is the so-called "sleeper curve."

The logic of this argument is identical to the claim, "market heroin is steadily growing in purity, therefore heroin is good for us." HOW DOES ANYONE BELIEVE THIS RUBBISH? It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that its ...more

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12 comments

Ryan

Ryan rated it:

06/04/07

i wanted to throw this book against a wall, many, many times while reading it.

my main problem with the book is the lack of data to support the hypothesis that johnson argues. if it were simply a polemic arguing that media has become more complex, and that complexity warrants closer inspection and not dismissal, i'd forgive it.

however, johnson begins the book by admitting that he isn't a scientist and then goes on to try to support his claims with scientific data. i'm not a scientist eit...more

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Lindsay

Lindsay rated it:

10/08/08

bookshelves: genre-x

Read in October, 2008

I found Johnson's argument that pop culture has become more complex to be interesting, even compelling. I'm still not sure I completely agree with him, but if nothing else it gave me a little more respect for video games and the people who play them. One thing that did bother me (and perhaps it's because I've been spending a lot of time lately reminding students to evaluate their information sources) is that I didn't get a good sense of Johnson's credentials. Based on some of the things he menti...more

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Brian

Brian rated it:

10/30/08

I picked this up after reading The Ghost Map by the same author. This book shared the same characteristics I liked so much about this previous work - an ability to cut across disciplines and synthesize simple and very convincing empirical arguments about modern life. In The Ghost Map, this meant demonstrating that urbanization has a net positive effect on civilization. In this book, he challenges the dogma that pop culture, especially video games and television, is causing a kind of dumbing d...more

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Kristen

Kristen rated it:

(review of isbn 1573223077)

10/04/08

bookshelves: fromlibrary, informationscience, nonfiction

Read in October, 2008

I had both a personal and professional interest in this book. The value of pop culture has always been debated in libraries, and video games in particular are a very hot, contentious topic in the field right now. The arguments were easy to follow even though I'm only familiar with most of his examples by reputation. Probably reversing most of the readers, I watched Dallas and Hill Street Blues back in the day, but have never seen ER, 24, or any reality series. I've played paper/dice D&D and ...more

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Jamie

Jamie rated it:

09/02/08

Read in March, 2006

In Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson describes a phenomenon he calls "the sleeper curve." Basically, it holds that the vessels of pop culture --mass media like TV shows, video games, and the Internet in particular-- have grown steadily more complex and cognitively demanding over the last 30 years. What's brilliant about Johnson's arguments is that he divorces them from discussions about the content of the media as well as its artistic or moralistic merit. Sure, the artisti...more In Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson describes a phenomenon he calls "the sleeper curve." Basically, it holds that the vessels of pop culture --mass media like TV shows, video games, and the Internet in particular-- have grown steadily more complex and cognitively demanding over the last 30 years. What's brilliant about Johnson's arguments is that he divorces them from discussions about the content of the media as well as its artistic or moralistic merit. Sure, the artistic value of The Legend of Zelda is nill when you compare it to literary classics (save the princess AGAIN? are you kidding me?), but Johnson notes that that's the wrong way to look at it. Instead, you have to look a the cognitive demands of the game and how it encourages the player to learn absurdly complex rules and follow them along while using cognitive functions relating to spatial intelligence, memory, and logical reasoning. What's more, Johnson actually makes a pretty good case for how media like video games and television are, on average, actually making us smarter instead of dumbing us down.

This isn't really new, either. "Everything Bad" opens with a discussion of how the author would use every ounce of brainpower he possessed to master dice-based baseball simulations with tables of tightly nested statistics and rules that make tax forms look like child's play. And it's a short mental hop from those games to something that resonated with me: Dungeons and Dragons. My mother always told me that if I put half as much interest into my school work as I did D&D that I would ...oh, I don't know, make the Dean's Honor List in college and then go on to earn a Ph.D. in psychology. Which, as you may know, I totally did. But Johnson points out that it wasn't in spite of my interest in all the arcane rules and statistics that were crammed between the covers of the Dungeon Master's Guide, nor despite my later love for video games. It was, at least in part, because of them. Stretching the mind by subjecting it to the cognitive demands of today's mass media actually makes people smarter and more capable of cognitive sommersaults in other areas. Yeah, I know, it's kind of hard to believe, but trust me; the book makes its arguments very well.

One of the other interesting ways in which "Everything Bad" upsets preconceptions about even the lowest of mass media is in its discussion of reality TV shows, and I have to admit that this one even flabbergasted me a bit. At first, anyway. Johnson spends a good chunk of one chapter discussing how shows like Survivor and The Apprentice are taxing on our intelligence --specifically, our EMOTIONAL intelligence. Briefly, emotional intelligence is a construct that deals with how well we can read the mental states and emotions of other people, track relationships between and within groups of people, and use that information to understand and predict what people will do. Watching reality television shows like The Apprentice requires emotional intelligence to make sense of what the various contestants are doing and WHY they're doing it. It's more than Bob Barker ever asked us to do on The Price is Right. To understand why Contestant A hates Contestant B but decided to create an alliance with Contestant C is a form of intelligence, Johnson argues. You can legitimately debate the merits of constructs like emotional intelligence, but he's definitely on to something I'd never thought of, especially relative to the simplicity of earlier shows.

There's a lot more I could go on about, like comparing the narrative complexity of today's most popular dramas with those of yesteryear (The Soppranos or the new Battlestar Galactica vs. Dragnet or Starsky and Hutch for instance) or the influence of the Internet on all of this, but I'm getting long-winded as it is. If you like video games, television, movies, books, the Internet, or puppies, you should totally read this book. ...less

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Sigfried

Sigfried rated it:

08/18/08

bookshelves: rhetoric

I read this to temper my dance with Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" (how do I italicize in this thing?), which I found to be pleasingly fun if not a little alarmist. This is written in the vein of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "In Defense of Poetry" albeit more post-modern than romantic.

Reading some of the criticisms of this book, I find myself annoyed that they attack ideas that Johnson has clearly stated counter-arguments for or points that he has conceded to the ...more

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Mark

Mark rated it:

08/17/08

Read in August, 2008

I read this a while ago but i never said what it was about. It was a pretty interesting premise actually - the author starts by mentioning that the conventional wisdom for any given generation is that 'pop culture just keeps getting more trashy and filled with sex and violence and is catered to the lowest common denominator' (and he includes excerpts from several articles saying just that - notably, he reveals one of the excerpts is from the 60s).

The author then spends the rest of the boo...more

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Libby

Libby rated it:

07/14/08

Read in July, 2008

Maybe I'm on a Steven Johnson kick...I really enjoyed this. I've been thinking for a long while (several years, in fact) that there's much more depth to pop culture than following Paris Hilton's escapades in the National Enquirer. My brain is wired differently than my parents', and I can thank computer camp and increasingly complex TV shows and working my way through a few levels of Myst for that. But reading this sent shivers down my spine, too — not necessarily in a bad way...more

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Chris

Chris added it

03/22/08

not as good as his other books but worth a quick read: i'm a big fan of Stephen Johnson's writing. Interface Culture should be on every digital media-related course's reading list and blew my mind at the time. I also think Emergence is a great book, which expands into more scientific areas. that said, i found this book slightly disappointing. it is well written and interesting in parts but there's nothing especially surprising or thought-provoking in it (especially if you've read his other books...more

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Chelsea

Chelsea rated it:

03/12/08

Read in March, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

This book makes me feel that I could give 4.6 stars here. It's a fascinating read, but I almost wish that it was *more* substantial - he has some great ideas going that need to be addressed in more than the brief Afterward.

Basically, his premise is that there is a "Sleeper Curve" at work in the development of contemporary pop culture. His argument is that our "smart" media is getting smarter and more complex, and that new media, such as video games and the internet, have...more This book makes me feel that I could give 4.6 stars here. It's a fascinating read, but I almost wish that it was *more* substantial - he has some great ideas going that need to be addressed in more than the brief Afterward.

Basically, his premise is that there is a "Sleeper Curve" at work in the development of contemporary pop culture. His argument is that our "smart" media is getting smarter and more complex, and that new media, such as video games and the internet, have beneficial qualities that far outweigh the cons when taken with moderation.

His argument is clearly laid out for each medium and I tend to agree with him on the overall concept of the Sleeper Curve. As he addresses each medium (games, tv, internet, film, etc) I felt that he really neglected bringing up and disputing counter-arguments. For example, in video games, he only breifly mentions "oh, yeah, and new studies say violent games aren't solely responsible for making kids violent". And in TV he spends a lot of time illustrating the growth in depth and scale of *good* television drama (and even comedy) and even finds merit in the likes of Survivor and The Apprentice for their ability to get average joes talking strategy, reading and writing copiously on internet forums and communicating at a fairly high level. However, he completely fails to mention the vast numbers of the dregs of television - the Paris and Nickis, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the like. Not even to say "well, when there's more of everything, that means theres more crap too".

His chapter on film was basically three pages saying "Film is old and about as good as it's going to get. Somethings as crazy as Momento or The Matrix were popular. Yay us." Frustratingly short considering the depth and breadth of previous chapters.

Overall, though, like I said before, I see his agrument and tend to agree with him. The fact of the matter is, what we used to consider "the good old days" weren't exactly that great. Shows were shallow and liner, networks assumed a least-common-denominator stance and even the "edgy" and controversial shows pale in comparison to the best writing of today.

Of course, he continues, this intellectual development of media has to be driven by someforce, and he argues that force is the natural inclination for the min to seek out challenges and the reward structure of problem->effort->solution. Because people like to bring things into their lives that are enjoyable and challenging, they seek out media with replay value, and thus drives the market for "smart" media.

He spend the second part of the book talking about the nature of IQ scoring and how the standard has been raised gradually over the last decades such that someone with a 100 even a few years ago would not achieve a score that high today. Then he basically spends the rest of the book hedging around the fact that though the IQ data is there, IQ scores are not a fantastic measure of someone's actual, innate, intelligence, but that we should take his word for it.

I really liked this book. I think that everyone, such as myself, who's ever said "Pop Culture's just getting dumber and dumber" needs to read his arguments, if for no other reason than to reassure them that all is not lost. ...less

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Amy

Amy rated it:

02/28/08

bookshelves: for-class

Read in February, 2008

I initially read this book for pleasure, and it was a pleasure--but it was also a book that used classic argumentation techniques very well, so I adopted it for teaching, too.

Johnson's controlling claim is that most of the criticism of popular culture's valuation has to do with the criteria by which its being evaluation: that is, most criticism of popular culture such as video games, television, and film is based on the grounds of its moral value rather than its cognitive value. Johnson arg...more

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Wellington

Wellington rated it:

01/28/08

Read in September, 2005

I picked this book for some contrast to Affluenza. Steven writes how television, computer games, and the Internet have improved human intelligence and are a greater benefit than cost.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to read something differing viewpoints. Stephen makes an intelligent argument that Everything Bad is Good for You.

For instance, television has grown so much more complex than the decades before. He chooses anecdotes from the Simpsons, Seinfield, the Sopranos, and West Wing to show h...more I picked this book for some contrast to Affluenza. Steven writes how television, computer games, and the Internet have improved human intelligence and are a greater benefit than cost.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to read something differing viewpoints. Stephen makes an intelligent argument that Everything Bad is Good for You.

For instance, television has grown so much more complex than the decades before. He chooses anecdotes from the Simpsons, Seinfield, the Sopranos, and West Wing to show how story arcs are longer and more complex. These shows are peppered with references to earlier shows and other cultural phenomenon giving television much richer in content. He even states that the dregs of television, reality TV, improve our minds by analyzing the characters and imagining our own actions in the situations. Analyzing and imagining are not actions of just zoning out in front of the television.

Computer games allow us to learn new worlds. With MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing games) such as Everquest and now World of Warcraft it gives a rich social network that we can not create in real life. These sorts of games create complex cooperation and competition networks where people spend real money to purchase that new-fangled virtual sword and really put forth a tremendous mental effort to their characters.

In some ways, computer games have an advantage over books – the traditional evidence of intelligence. Computer games allow a person to join an interactive world while a book (except for a choose your own adventure book) allows a reader to only walk one path to one conclusion. Games can be social while most book reading is done in solitude.

In the end, I think one can do anything zombie-like or mindfully. There are books widely considered trash while there are computer games and television shows that people will gladly allow their children to play or watch to increase their intelligence. It’s not what you do that makes you smart or who you are, it’s how you do it and what you take from it.

Very easy read that I finished in one evening. ...less

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AJ rated it:

(review of isbn 1573223077)

12/08/07

bookshelves: do-not-own, library, nonfiction

Read in December, 2007

This is a very intriguing book that makes the argument that instead of being dumbed down and depraved, today's popular culture is actually complex, thought-provoking and is helping make people smarter. The argument goes along the lines that today's movies, television shows, Internet media and video games are far more complex than ever before, which forces the users of these forms of media to think critically, make connections, analyze details and think beyond just staring at the screen.

I lov...more

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Josh

Josh rated it:

07/29/07

Read in June, 2005

Taken from a previous blog entry: http://josh.ev9.org/weblog/arc...

I finished a book this evening, one which shared the title of this entry. I found it quite interesting. A number of people at my school study the growing science of New Media, which sounds somewhat interesting to me, but is something I have never sat down and tried to think about too deeply. This book gave me a good background into the field, and did a good...more Taken from a previous blog entry: http://josh.ev9.org/weblog/arc...

I finished a book this evening, one which shared the title of this entry. I found it quite interesting. A number of people at my school study the growing science of New Media, which sounds somewhat interesting to me, but is something I have never sat down and tried to think about too deeply. This book gave me a good background into the field, and did a good job of tying modern cognitive science into the lessons.

In Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson argues against the notion that the technological staples of today’s popular culture (Television, Film, Video Games, and the Internet) are not dumbing-down the culture. On the contrary, these media train newer, better cognitive abilities. Johnson argues that as time passes, pop culture is subjected to increasingly complex programming, which leads to greater intelligence, not less.

I found many of the points made in the book to be debatable, but that does not mean that I disagree with Johnson. I believe that on the whole, today’s media is much more complex than that of yesteryear. The comedy of “I Love Lucy” doesn’t stand a chance when compared with that of “Seinfeld.” Sure, they’re both funny, but I can watch Seinfeld over and over and still laugh, while an episode of Lucy is bound to get boring after the second viewing. That’s just one example of the increasing complexity.

I also agree with Johnson’s sentiments that giving respect to today’s media does not give us license to forget the old favorites. So maybe TV is good for us, but that doesn’t mean reading should go out the window. Book reading is still vital, and we must instill this belief in our culture before we all get too used to the choppy flow of hypertext.

I recommend this book. It’s a relatively fast read, and it relates to your life, guaranteed. It is also written in plain English, a considerable feat for such a heavy topic. I’ll leave you with the book’s conclusion:

"The cultural race to the bottom is a myth; we do not live in a fallen state of cheap pleasures that pale beside the intellectual riches of yesterday. And we are not innate slackers, drawn inexorably to the least offensive and least complicated entertainment available. All around us the world of mass entertainment grows more demanding and sophisticated, and our brains happily gravitate to that newfound complexity. And by gravitating,they make the effect more pronounced. Dumbing down is not the natural state of popular culture over time - quite the opposite. The great unsung story of our culture today is how many welcome trends are going up."...less

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heather

heather rated it:

06/19/07

bookshelves: 2007

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in June, 2007

i knew someone who read this a while back, and her description of the book made it sound idiotic to me (although she was in love with it). last year i read and fell in love with johnson's book the ghost map, an engagingly narrated work about the soho cholera epidemic. i couldn't believe that the guy who wrote that book had also written this one. when i found it on remainder for $3 last week, i decided to give it a go.

i'll start by saying that this is a quick read and well-written. i find my...more i knew someone who read this a while back, and her description of the book made it sound idiotic to me (although she was in love with it). last year i read and fell in love with johnson's book the ghost map, an engagingly narrated work about the soho cholera epidemic. i couldn't believe that the guy who wrote that book had also written this one. when i found it on remainder for $3 last week, i decided to give it a go.

i'll start by saying that this is a quick read and well-written. i find myself sometimes wanting to agree with johnson and sometimes liking his points. the basic problem with this book is inherent in the title: johnson relies entirely too heavily on the good vs bad paradigm. it's too simplistic. he's criticizing others for blanketly calling pop culture "bad," but he's guilty of the same gross oversimplification in calling tv shows and video games "good." i can agree with many of his statements about the increasing level of complexity in american entertainment and i can even agree that much pop culture media engages a person's mental faculties in innovative and worthwhile ways. however, just saying that the stuff that's "bad" now is better than what was "bad" thirty years ago doesn't make the "bad" stuff "good." the willful ignoring of shades of gray is exactly the problem with most media critics (also, with most journalists), including johnson.

the other big problem with his theory is that it only works for his own, and perhaps the preceding, generation. to say that older forms of entertainment have somehow "trained" people to grasp today's more complex and rewarding entertainment is to ignore the fact that large swaths of pop culture consumers have little to zero experience with earlier forms. honestly, how many people who are currently in high school or college have any significant exposure to dragnet? dragnet did not somehow prepare these people to follow the sopranos. unless he's trying to argue that this training is somehow genetically passed down, the argument is nonsensical in terms of the general american populace.

johnson also misses what, to me, seems a prime opportunity. in the introduction, he cites the recent national endowment for the arts study (which i like to personally call the doom and gloom study) that purports that reading for pleasure is on a sharp decline in the american adult population. johnson brings up the study without bothering to follow through with the pop culture implications of it, specifically that the study did not include such materials as graphic novels or magazines (among other categories) in the survey and also excluded any reading that might be done for job or school related purposes. you'd think johnson would hop on the chance to harp on how the definition of "reading," particularly of "reading for pleasure," has been twisted by the nea in order to exclude much of what people, and often highly educated people at that, might choose to spend their leisure hours enjoying.

i'm glad to be reading it but that i'm highly disappointed in johnson's reliance on hyperbole and the gaping holes he leaves in his theories. for all that, though, the way that he's thinking about pop culture is relevant and, i think, a positive direction for sociological and cultural studies. i would love to see a more comprehensive analyst pick up his ideas and take them to the next level. and it's certainly a book that's made me think and engaged me, which earns an extra star....less

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Janice

Janice rated it:

05/29/07

Read in August, 2007

I found this book really interesting although I think his thesis wasn't really enough to cover all the pages. There was a lot of redundancy which I found a bit frustrating. Johnson would explain a point and then give an example from popular culture, and then another, and then another. By the fourth example - I was pretty sure i got the point.

The end of the book was perplexing though as the first part of the book was clearly written to be accessible to the masses, the last section made ab...more

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