Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter

Steven Johnson

Penguin, 2006 - Social Science - 254 pages

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. '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.

What people are saying

Review: Everything Bad is Good for You

User Review  - Hannah - Goodreads

As you would think from the title, this book is fascinating. (really). This teaches and informs you without ever seeming like it is; with humor, pop culutre references and engaging statistics. As a ...

Review: Everything Bad is Good for You

User Review  - Celena O'brien - Goodreads

“Everything Bad Is Good For You” by Steven Johnson strives to make the argument that popular culture, in the new millennium is more complex and disperses more information than it did in the 1970's ...

Contents

• The Sleeper Curve: 1
• PART ONE: 15
• PART TWO: 137
• Afterword: 201
• Notes on Further Reading: 212
• Notes: 222
• Acknowledgments: 251

About the author

Steven Johnson is the author of seven bestsellers, including Where Good Ideas Come From, The Invention of Air, The Ghost Map, and Everything Bad Is Good for You, and is the editor of the anthology The Innovator's Cookbook. He is the founder of a variety of influential websites?most recently, outside.in?and writes for Time, Wired, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Marin County, California, with his wife and three sons.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter
• Author: Steven Johnson
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 2006
• ISBN: 1594481946, 9781594481949
• Length: 254 pages
• Subjects: Psychology / General; Social Science / Popular Culture