Ginnie's review
Everything Bad is Good for You
by Steven Johnson
Ginnie's review
Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
Ginnie's review
rating:
bookshelves:
technology
Difficult to take seriously. 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 tries to make a case that even today's least nutritional TV junk food-the "Joe Millionaire"s and "Survivor"s 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 Boat"s and "I Love Lucy"s that preceded it. When it comes to television, even (perhaps especially) crappy television, Johnson argues, "the content is less interesting than the co
Johnson tries to make a case that even today's least nutritional TV junk food-the "Joe Millionaire"s and "Survivor"s 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 Boat"s and "I Love Lucy"s that preceded it. When it comes to television, even (perhaps especially) crappy television, Johnson argues, "the content is less interesting than the co
