<![CDATA[Everything Bad is Good for You, the new book by Steven Johnson is a great read; I recommend it for anyone worried that we’re melting the culture with games, TV and movies.
The basic argument, that we’re learning complex problem-solving skills from the media we use, especially games and television, which are offering increasingly sophisticated narrative challenges. Johnson offers the ideas of probing and telescoping, the process of testing the rules in a situation and applying that knowledge to find creative solutions.
It will certainly be attacked as a naive defense of popular culture by those who don’t take the time to read. Johnson’s use of The Apprentice as a kind of the lowest common denominator rising to provide more complex narrative and information challenges compared to the “worst” programming of earlier eras will raise hackles, but his point is a sound one. We actually participate in much more complex thinking about the characters and conflicts than we did watching Gilligan’s Island.
There are some aspects of his argument that I don’t think hold up. He explains about presidential candidates appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show:
You can’t get a sense of a candidate’s mind reading skills [Johnson’s description of a candidate’s ability to appear empathetic] by watching them give a memorized stump speech, or seeing their thirty-second ads, or God knows reading their campaign blog posts. But what does give you that kind of information is the one-on-one television interview format—Meet the Press and Charlie Rose, of course, but probably more effectively, Oprah, because the format is more social and free-flowing.
Having covered some inspired political speakers, I disagree. I’ve watched an audience fall in love with a great speaker. That hasn’t changed since the time of Lincoln or Pericles, rather there are other venues in modern media in which even poor political performers are able to give the impression they have empathy for ordinary people.
A worthwhile read. Highly recommended.]]>