In "Everything Bad Is Good For You" it shows how the stuff that we do everyday with our technology is actually helping us. The author Steven Johnson, tries to convince us that video games, t.v. and the Internet is all good for us. I think he tries to prove that popular culture is not only growing more complex, but that the complexity is making consumers of pop culture more intelligent. The main idea of the book is divided into two main parts; arguing that video games, television, the Internet and movies have grown more complex in recent years, and the second part outlining the relationship between those forms of entertainment and increased intelligence.
Video games, he points out, cannot be directly compared to books in terms of the types of intelligence they encourage. Video games, according to Johnson, are valuable because they force players to make choices, solve problems, keep track of varied situations and in some cases cooperate with others. I've never been very good at reading since I started later than most people and got stuck in a random class that I don't really ever understand. In games I feel like I can be more of myself again rather than someone who wants to protect. Many kids would get angry when they are playing games and you tell them to stop, you can't really get this reaction when taking a book from someone.
Even reality TV, the easiest target around, is more complex compared to it's historical antecedent, the game show. Rather than reading all the time we can find other ways of learning like watching television. Hard to believe but I've never read any of the Harry Potter series nor the Twilight series to me they don't look that interesting and fun to read. I watch kids spending hours reading those books wondering about all the stuff they could have use that time for. It's a waste since for most good stories there's a story so don't bother wasting your precious life reading when you can receive knowledge another way.
The Internet is valuable in three ways according to Johnson: by virtue of being participatory, by forcing users to learn new interfaces and by creating new channels for social interaction. Johnson provides a laundry list of online interactions that bring people together and make them smarter. Even though we are talking to stranger in a way it's alright because you get to learn a lot from them and interact with people you could never meet. When you made your 1st friend did you ever stop to think about how you guys started out as strangers and slowly became close friends. There are many people we can't trust but we have to learn through experience what we should and should not do.
In Feed, everything looked perfect till the hacker came along and in this book it shows that they experience something they wouldn't have if the feed wasn't installed. If Titus was a ordinary kid without the feed and reading everyday to improve his skills of course he would not be able to compete with the feed since all that knowledge from the feed is in their mind when asked something they could just look it up unlike us we have to think about what happened and if we didn't read or understand it we wouldn't be able to answer. In the end Titus felt human because he realized what Violet was trying to say. In both stories if the world were to end we would spend our last minutes pretending it was a normal day or panic because we don't want to accept that this is the end. We use technology to make everything easier on ourselves and use it to escape reality because we don't want to face, it not ready to face it, and don't know how to face it.
WE FIND LOOPHOLES FOR EVERYTHING WE DO!
Thank you for reading =^-^=
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To Na Lin:
ReplyDeleteWell I think you could have read the twilight series because its better than Harry Potter xD. And your point on how we all started out as strangers and then to friends was interesting.
I thought your main points were that in games, we can be more of ourselves than reading books and learning other ways to learn other things. Also how socializing with strangers can be knowledgeable because we are learning what their lives are and other facts/opinions they have.
I think I have to disagree with you about taking away a book from a person and they would not get as much reaction as you would get from a kid playing a game. When reading picture books like the kids do or an interesting book, like I would if I am reading and then gets distracted or stopped by someone, I would get really mad at a point. And those kids that got stopped would throw a tantrum. Also I think there are other ways of learning besides books like learning from games and television. Though I keep thinking that games and television are more of a social interaction than more of the intelligence part.
I thought you could have develop the difference of Johnson and Anderson's book because I think its me that I don't see much of the contradictions. And I thought you could develop what other ways are can we use to learn or get knowledge from. Or talk about the emotion IQ that Johnson was talking about.
Your post made me consider about my own life because I use the computer more than playing games or watching the television. I learned a lot from watching anime and the chinese shows but I thought reading was fun and imaginative as well. Like manga, its a book and I bet a lot of people would start yelling at me if I disturbed from reading (if they are a manga fan).
It was nice reading your post. Hope to read more next time~ =D
Hi Na Lin~
ReplyDeleteYour summaries of the book was really good, it talked about what the author said in a very succint way and people reading it could get what the chapters were about. All your paragraphs are really readable. I liked how you also added personal anecdotes and feelings when you are talking about the book, like when you are talking about gaming and the way it makes you feel.
When you said there are loopholes in everything, I agree and it’s in our nature to try to discover them. That’s why lawyers are able to manipulate the law the way they do and politicians. Maybe that’s what people are trying to do when playing a game, to see if an “impossible” situation has a loophole. The participatory nature of video games do make it more exciting and is what keeps us interested as well as the problems that crop up in the game. I find to some extent we do want to be challenged and want things that are harder to come by, like the way leveling works in virtual games, it gets harder to level each time you increase your level and that presents a challenge that is appealing, and even though people may complain about it, the feeling they get when they finally do level is greater than if it was that easy to level every time.
You said a lot of great reactions about your experiences in video games and television, you could develop what perspectives you find useful and what perspectives are not as useful and why. Haha, I found your comment a bit dramatic, to do away with reading altogether since reading has its own virtues as well.
Overall I thought this was very good and had a lot of good points like the way people might experience and learn from using technology. Great post :D