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Everything Bad Is Good for You
Steven Johnson
How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
Riverhead
May 2006
256 pages
ISBN: 1573223077
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Self-Help
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Mind Wide
Open comes a groundbreaking assessment of popular culture as
it's never been considered before: through the lens of
intelligence. The $10 billion video gaming industry is now the
second-largest segment of the entertainment industry in the
United States, outstripping film and far surpassing books.
Reality television shows featuring silicone-stuffed CEO
wannabes and bug-eating adrenaline junkies dominate the
ratings. But prominent social and cultural critic Steven
Johnson argues that our popular culture has never been smarter. Drawing from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics,
and literary theory, Johnson argues that the junk culture
we're so eager to dismiss is in fact making us more
intelligent. A video game will never be a book, Johnson
acknowledges, nor should it aspire to be-and, in fact, video
games, from Tetris to The Sims to Grand Theft Auto, have
been shown to raise IQ scores and develop cognitive
abilities that can't be learned from books. Likewise,
successful television, when examined closely and taken
seriously, reveals surprising narrative sophistication and
intellectual demands. Startling, provocative, and endlessly engaging, Everything
Bad Is Good for You is a hopeful and spirited account of
contemporary culture. Elegantly and convincingly, Johnson
demonstrates that our culture is not declining but
changing-in exciting and stimulating ways we'd do well to
understand. You will never regard the glow of the video game
or television screen the same way again.
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