Review of Everything Bad Is Good For You - Part 3

In Part 2, I noted a few important omissions from Steven Johnson’s book Everything Bad Is Good For You, challenging especially his emphasis on structure over content. Yet to point out the importance of content is not to dismiss his argument as worthless (nor pop culture itself). Indeed, whether high-brow or low, written, filmed or sung, art doesn’t have to debase and distort, it can also uplift and illuminate, and Johnson is right that pop culture's dangers and drawbacks are too often wielded as a club to beat back any serious consideration of its benefits. To that end, he has identified some encouraging developments.

First, we need to put aside some dearly held illusions. Frequently, in judging popular media, we have an unrealistically romanticized view of the past. We remember the good ol’ days when television was innocent and uplifting, but forget that it was also simplistic and patronizing. We dream of the glory days before television, “when kids used their imaginations,” but fail to consider that they spent more time playing Kick the Can than reading Shakespeare. Compared to that, your typical ten-year-old computer wiz doesn’t seem so brain-dead after all.

Truly, Johnson has identified an important trend toward greater media complexity. Neil Postman did not anticipate this development, because it’s being driven primarily by the rise of newer “technologies of convenience,” from VHS to TiVo. The many ways these have pushed media producers away from the “Least Objectionable Programming” model of yesteryear, toward a “Most Repeatable Programming” model that rewards deeper concentration and long-term commitment, has not always been recognized by otherwise insightful cultural analysts.

When Postman was writing in 1985, television was essentially a “present tense medium,” and networks rightly feared the slightest confusion or offense might drive away their audience. In contrast, many of today’s popular programs--from 24 to LOST and Battlestar Galactica--absolutely depend on challenging their audiences to return again and again. Similarly, the most significant but often-overlooked feature of many recent video games is not the thumb exercise they provide, but how much intellectual work they demand. Anyone who has ever seriously attempted to succeed at SimCity or even Grand Theft Auto knows how blisteringly, frustratingly hard it is. Despite appearances, many of today’s most popular entertainments demand a remarkable degree of patient endurance, conscious interaction and long-term commitment.

Moreover, I wonder if simply restricting our indulgence in pop culture to rare and superficial engagement actually risks backing us into the very dangers we are trying to avoid. If the main thing making pop culture smarter is that producers can now expect us to pay better and longer attention (as Johnson helpfully notes: the separation between set-up and punch line on shows like Seinfeld can sometimes be measured in years rather than seconds), might it be that any proper response to modern society will have to leave room for the occasional obsession? Pop culture is here to stay, and Johnson is right that: “Out of obsession comes expertise, a confidence in your own powers of analysis – a sense that if you stick with the system long enough, you’ll truly figure out how it works.” (pg. 194) While learning the minutiae of Seinfeld lore might seem a waste of time, the skills necessary to discover such trivia probably do have wider applicability than is usually assumed.

If nothing else, the days of treating modern entertainment as a kind of degenerate second-best to the pristine realm of text should finally be put aside. There are clear and important differences between reading and gaming and television viewing, and the kinds of society they foster, but not all differences are bad. Writing is one art, not the only one. Truly, the “boob tube” is no substitute for literature, but it might just be that even great books are no substitute for good popular entertainment?

Review of Everything Bad Is Good For You - Part 2

As mentioned in Part 1 of this review, there is much in Steven Johnson’s book that deserves consideration as we think about the potential and dangers of modern entertainment. Before getting there, however, we must first step back and examine the book’s presuppositions: Everything Bad is Good For You, regrettably, suffers from a kind of schizophrenia of purpose that deeply undermines its force.

As the provocative title implies, Johnson wants to be iconoclastic, but in the end he’s too smart for his own good. His book brims over with qualifiers and his conspicuous back-peddling strongly suggests that the thesis has been hyped to increase sales (a tactic which worked, by the way). Everything Bad is Good For You quickly becomes something like: Pop Culture Is Smarter Than It Used to Be – Though Maybe It Still Can’t Compare to High Art – and Can Be Part (But Only One Part) of a Healthy Media Diet. The latter statement is certainly closer to the truth, even if it makes for a lousy title. But in shifting towards this more nuanced stance, his point is nearly reduced to an empty shell aimed at a straw man. There is much worth pondering here, but it’s up to the reader to sort it out of the rubble.

The problem, it seems, is Johnson’s willingness to emphasize the positives while downplaying or ignoring the negative aspects of these “distractions.” For instance, you will search in vain for a discussion of the close connection between infant TV viewing and attention deficit disorder. Similarly, Neil Postman’s point that our overly visual culture has diminished our tolerance for sustained public discourse is all but dismissed as irrelevant (I wonder if Johnson learned his lesson promoting the book on various talk shows?). He elects to focus on how TV lets us see our politicians in more candid settings – providing “valuable” insight into their integrity – while completely ignoring the medium’s far broader implications on the political process.

But television's predisposition to replace substance with image must not be ignored: It’s no accident that flashy crime dramas like CSI – with their high tech gadgetry, attractive actors and tidy conclusions – far outperform true crime documentaries. Real life can’t live up to fiction in any form, but no previous medium provides a more convincing illusion that its truncated worldview is actually educational.

Finally, by focusing on structure rather than content, Johnson misses a great deal of what is most important in determining the potential benefits and dangers of these media. For instance, it’s hard to believe that anyone would try to judge the “cognitive value” of 24 based solely on the number of plotlines and significant relationships it juggles – yet this is precisely what Johnson does! Apparently, he hasn't considered that by this standard daytime soap operas would be the smartest thing on television. And when he starts praising Reality TV because it can teach “social IQ,” I’m tempted to respond: Sure, and you can learn risk-assessment betting on cock fights....

Despite all of this, however, Johnson is right to criticize those who appeal to poor content in dismissing television and gaming as media. Not all television, movies or games are mindless – far from it – and just because some popular choices are immoral or worthless, does not prove these media are irredeemable. One need only mention The Da Vinci Code to realize the same criteria would also eliminate reading as a waste of time. Indeed, doesn’t even the Bible include a rather large amount of immoral behavior? Clearly there is more to the value of a medium than whether all of its content is “family friendly,” and Johnson is right to insist upon this. In Part 3, then, we will consider the more positive aspects of his argument.

Review of Everything Bad Is Good For You - Part 1

The following is a review I wrote a couple years ago, but never published. I will post it in three parts over the next three days:

Have you noticed how cell phones have replaced lighters at concerts? Where once we lifted little flames, we now raise tribute to a new addiction: modern technology. Welcome to our digital world, where every 3rd grader has a computer, and we’re hooked on television before we can walk. Conventional wisdom (including mine) finds something particularly apt in this connection between addictive drugs and modern technology. According to Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, the rise of television and its many offshoots has dulled our minds and undermined public discourse of the sort that previous, book-focused cultures supposedly maintained.

But what if this conventional wisdom is misleading? What if the attraction of these flickering screens derives less from their propensity for mindless distraction, and more from their participatory nature and underlying challenge? Addictive though they are, what if there are important aspects of the mind that such technologies actually nourish better than reading?

In his intriguing little book, Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson suggests that this may well be true. He argues that by focusing so exclusively on the immoral content and non-literary nature of modern entertainment, we have missed the benefits our society has gained from this addiction. He argues that we must balance pop culture’s perceived dangers with an even-handed assessment of its potential rewards if we are to make informed decisions about its role in our lives.

To that end, he offers an impressive catalogue of intellectual skills that modern media, especially video games, have been unconsciously teaching us. These include the abilities to probe and explore one’s environment, to problem-solve and hypothesize, to strategize and anticipate the future, to assess risks and make decisions, to overcome failure and pursue goals, and many more.

Johnson suggests that even the notoriously passive medium of television has been growing ever more interactive in recent decades. Increasingly demanding programming has been steadily abandoning the “flashing arrows” and predictable stories that Postman lamented, forcing its audience to “lean forward” and “fill in” to make sense of the complex plots and social situations depicted on screen.

He also provides some interesting (though controversial) reasons to connect this “Sleeper Curve” of quietly increasing complexity, with the rising IQ scores of the 20th century known as the Flynn Effect. For he notes that the types of IQ test which have shown the most improvement are precisely those which measure the pattern-recognition and problem-solving skills video games teach.

For all these reasons and more, this breezy but thought-provoking book deserves wide consideration to balance the derision of critics like Postman. While there is much to question in this volume, there is also much that is worth earnest reflection as we seek to make our way through this inescapably technological world.

Continued in Part 2.