Book 31: Everything Bad is Good for You

TITLE: Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Maing Us Smarter
AUTHOR: Steven Johnson
STARTED: June 9, 2008
FINISHED: June 12, 2008
PAGES: 240
GENRE: Media Studies

FIRST SENTENCE: This book is an old-fashioned work of persuasion that ultimately aims to convince you of one thing: that popular culture has, on average, grown more complex and intellectually challenging over the past thirty years.

SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] Forget everything you've read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, intelligent, and convincing endorsement of today's mass entertainment, national bestselling author Steven Johnson argues that the pop culture we soak in every day-from The Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons-has been growing more and more sophisticated and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are making our minds measurably sharper. You will never regard the glow of the video game or television screen the same way again.

THOUGHTS: Johnson’s arguments may be mainly anecdotal and observational, but they are highly persuasive. As a consumer of pop culture, it is hard to deny the points he makes. Johnson’s work is a thought provoking and fascinating read, but it leaves something to be desired. The downfall of Johnson’s book is that it is unfinished. Popular culture alone cannot make us smarter. It can aid in how we think, but that alone is not enough to make for an intelligent generation of thinkers. When Johnson admits that we need to continue to foster reading and other, tried and true forms of learning, he almost negates the first two hundred pages of his book.

Instead of focusing on the direct benefits of popular culture, Johnson should have spent more pages discussing how popular culture engages collateral learning and how this learning enhances the explicit learning provided from books and classroom instruction. The lessons of the book are never applied to reality; they are simply left for the reader to ponder. Johnson asks his readers too often to make their own conclusions.

RATING: 6/10 [Good]