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November 28, 2005
Everything Bad is Good for You
“You might reasonably object at this point that I have merely demonstrated that video games are the digital equivalent of crack cocaine.”
-Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson
So I’ve finally started reading Everything Bad is Good for You. I’ve only finished the section on video games, and I already have to blog about this book. I, myself, am not a video gamer. I take that back; I love to play Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, Dig Dug, Solitaire, and, my far and away favorite, Tetris. But new-fangled games such as the various incarnations of Star Wars my husband used to play, the Nancy Drew CD-ROMs I tried at the library, and even the Godzilla game Lucas loves? No way. I think of them the way I think of crossword puzzles: way too much work. I will usually only say this quietly to people I trust, but those games are HARD. Even when I was playing the Nancy Drew game that corresponds to a book I’ve read (i.e. I knew the solution to the mystery before I started), I couldn’t figure out what the heck to do.
In the first section of his book, Johnson verifies my feelings, showing that even though video games tend to have simplistic content (for instance, shooting bad guys or rescuing a damsel in distress), they demand use of higher-level problem solving abilities the way, say, a word problem or science experiment does. (This would, incidentally, explain my apathy toward video games, as, while I could do both things, I always hated word problems and science experiments with particular vehemence.) You have to explore, find information, form hypotheses, test your hypotheses, and go on from there to get through a lot of these games. Not so much with Tetris. Of Tetris, he says, “Researchers have long suspected that geometric games like Tetris have such a hypnotic hold over us (longtime Tetris players have vivid dreams about the game) because the game’s elemental shapes activate modules in our visual system that execute low-level forms of pattern recognition – sensing parallel and perpendicular lines, for instance.”
Um, okay. I think this translates, “Adrienne’s brain likes the pretty colors and shapes.”
Anyway, I’m always looking for ways to justify my fascination with and immersion in aspects of popular culture as well as the way I make popular culture accessible to children at the library (through things like CD-ROMs, PlayStation 2 games, DVDs, and paperback books featuring such characters at the Bratz, My Little Ponies, and Teen Titans), and this book is proving both useful and thought-provoking. I’ve long thought that it’s wrong to dismiss something simply because it’s popular or doesn’t have artistic quality. If people are consuming it, there’s probably something there, some sort of need it’s filling. This is a particularly important thing for a librarian to think about when developing a collection and deciding what will and won’t be accessible in her library.
It’s all very interesting. I’m sure I’ll post on this again when I’ve read more. I’m anxiously awaiting the sections on film and the Internet, but first I must slog through television, a section that seems to have an unnatural quantity of charts.
Posted by adrienne at November 28, 2005 03:17 PM
Comments
So you're reading a book about how pop culture makes you smarter, so you can justify your obession, but you do not play the new video games because they require more effort and therefore make you smarter? Hmmm, you may have something in common with my students after all. Of course they do play the video games but cannot watch a half hour video on the Great Wall of China or write anything over 3 sentences. Nor do they fully grasp the cause & effect factor like, no work, no grade.
Posted by: tonderdo at November 28, 2005 05:41 PM
I'm in it for the justification of the amount of time I spend on the Internet and watching movies such as A Bucket of Blood.
Posted by: Adrienne at November 28, 2005 08:27 PM
Just thought you'd like to know that we have a Miss Pacman machine in our kitchen...
Posted by: Cathy at November 29, 2005 11:42 AM
I play some strategy games that really do require quick thinking, proper planning, and critical decision-making skills. Though the decisions I make at work are different (like I never have to decide to build more tank-killing airplanes), the skills are the same and being able to recognize a weakness in a plan early and coming up with quick contingencies are all things I do at work.
I also played Half-Life 2 recently, thinking that would be completely mindless blowing-of-things-up, but it involved a lot of problem solving and creative thought, like flooding a room by turning a valve on so you can swim down and through a tunnel and sometimes stacking things so you can reach a window. Another was making a bridge float up by pulling plastic drums under the water and making it buoyant.
Posted by: ChuckS at November 29, 2005 01:15 PM
Cathy,
OH MY GOD! MISS PACMAN IN YOUR HOUSE!?!?! WHY DO YOU EVER LEAVE???
That is just so cool. The arcade version is soooo much better than the one I have for my laptop.
Chuck,
You see? I'd never want to go down the tunnel badly enough to figure out that I had to flood the room and everything. I'd try to figure it out a couple times and then I'd change my mind about the whole thing and either blog or watch a DVD or read or something. It's a personality defect, I know.
Posted by: Adrienne at November 29, 2005 08:35 PM
Another weird coincidence -- I'm reading the same book. I am a pop culture junkie. I think it all started when tried to make brownies in a Parkay margarine tub in my Easy Bake oven...in my room. My sister and I inhaled the chocolaty melted plastic fumes all night, and neither of us has been the same since.
Posted by: Patty at December 1, 2005 09:19 PM
I meant to include this link in my first post...it's big pop culture --
Virgin Records Band Collage - there are 70 band names represented in this picture. How many can you find?
Posted by: Patty at December 1, 2005 09:21 PM