KristoCat
New Member
I recently read this book and I thought it was really interesting and difficult to argue against. Steven Johnson's main thesis is that developments in popular culture over the last thirty years or so has been slowly but surely making us smarter.
Johnson mainly looks at video games and television, but also discusses movies and the Internet. He focuses on the demands that these various forms of entertainment actually make on our brains. For example, heavy gamers develop amazing problem-solving skills, and they develop the ability to probe new environments in an intelligent manner and to constantly keep a nested hierarchy of goals in mind as they solve problems and navigate in the game world.
Television has also become a lot more stimulating. If you look at a series such as The Sopranos or Lost, you see multiple threading (storylines) in each episode, and the content of the episode forces the viewer to keep track of multiple plotlines as well as rememeber and incorporate information from previous shows, sometimes occurring weeks before the current show.
Johnson is also not saying that we should throw away such traditional mind-stimulators such as books. He is just saying that popular entertainment should be looked at a little more closely for the reasons outlined above.
Overall I thought it was a great book. Extremely interesting.
Johnson mainly looks at video games and television, but also discusses movies and the Internet. He focuses on the demands that these various forms of entertainment actually make on our brains. For example, heavy gamers develop amazing problem-solving skills, and they develop the ability to probe new environments in an intelligent manner and to constantly keep a nested hierarchy of goals in mind as they solve problems and navigate in the game world.
Television has also become a lot more stimulating. If you look at a series such as The Sopranos or Lost, you see multiple threading (storylines) in each episode, and the content of the episode forces the viewer to keep track of multiple plotlines as well as rememeber and incorporate information from previous shows, sometimes occurring weeks before the current show.
Johnson is also not saying that we should throw away such traditional mind-stimulators such as books. He is just saying that popular entertainment should be looked at a little more closely for the reasons outlined above.
Overall I thought it was a great book. Extremely interesting.
It was interesting.