In Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You," he present his beliefs on how pop culture is positive. I agree that it requires a lot of intelligence to invent ideas and software for entertainment. However, there is some truth to George Will's quote. I do not necessarily think that adults playing games or watching movies on their computer is a problem or define one's intelligence. But from my interpretation, adults are becoming more absorbed in technology versus interacting personally. In my opinion, certain technology is a nice little "dress-up" to make things easier and is used to occupy time. Often people really do not play games to expand cognitive thinking. Nine times out of ten people probably would not take the positive things they learn from games and apply it to life.
On the other hand, his sarcasm about the phone, comparing it to his nephew figuring out the Simms game was quite intriguing. I think Johnson's point was that some things are common sense. The game involved more complex thinking than learning how to use a dial tone phone. After that Steven discuss how complicated games are today and it requires patience, decision making, probing and telescopic thinking. Then he takes that and compares it to reading. I agree with some of his points on that and others not so much. Overall I think that Steven did good at explaining why games can be good. The questions are-- are they good enough to apply in reality? How many people actually use cognitive techniques learned from games to reality?
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