EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU by Stephen Johnson (Penguin)

Penguin Releases Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson

Should we feel guilty for letting our kids (or ourselves!) play Grand Theft Auto instead of socialising or reading? Are our brains going soft on a diet of soap operas? Has reality TV turned us into voyeurs? Are we really being dumbed down by popular culture?

No. Steven Johnson, author of the US bestseller Mind Wide Open, takes a deft mixture of economics, narrative theories, technology, neuroscience – and a long hard look at popular culture – to turn all these worries about it on their heads. Over the last thirty years the increasing sophistication of popular culture has paid dividends in our mental agility, connectivity and even IQs.

Take reality TV and video games. Players have to solve problems and make both snap judgements and long-term strategies. They must discover the rules and limits of their artificial worlds by testing them with scientific hypotheses. Video-games are a cerebral test, while reality TV develops ‘emotional intelligence’. Tellingly, test scores that track the kind of fluid intelligence required by games have been rising steadily in most industrialized societies for the past thirty years.

Compared to the simple plotlines of Starsky and Hutch, say, Sopranos fans have to work out the plot not only from on-screen events from around eight narrative threads, but also from what hasn’t been shown, and from references to events from other episodes. We can watch it again if we need to. The Internet allows us to discuss the key to a video-game, or plot-twist in a TV series, with a huge on-line community.

Everything Bad Is Good For You (http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0141018682,00.html)has transformed the debate on popular culture. For Johnson, understanding the importance of popular culture means recognising that our real-life ability to analyse and problem-solve has improved. It means parents need not be terrified that their children’s brains are atrophying. And it means that our brains are working rather hard. Pass the remote.

How I wish this was true.

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