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

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

Author:
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication Year: 2006
ASIN: 1594481946
ISBN: 1594481946

Malcolm Gladwell reviewed this for The New Yorker, saying, "[Johnson] is as happy analyzing Finding Nemo as he is dissecting the intricacies of a piece of software." The publisher says: "Forget everything you’ve ever read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, unfailingly intelligent, thoroughly researched, and surprisingly convincing big idea book, Steven Johnson draws from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and media theory to argue that the pop culture we soak in every day—from Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons—has been growing more sophisticated with each passing year, and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are actually making our minds measurably sharper."

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About the Book

From the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Farsighted

Forget everything you’ve ever read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, unfailingly intelligent, thoroughly researched, and surprisingly convincing big idea book, Steven Johnson draws from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and media theory to argue that the pop culture we soak in every day—from Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons—has been growing more sophisticated with each passing year, and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are actually making our minds measurably sharper. After reading Everything Bad is Good for You, you will never regard the glow of the video game or television screen the same way again.

With a new afterword by the author.

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