Paper Xbox and MTV Improving My Life Hours on End The world of pop culture will never be the same. Visionary writer Steven Johnson proves this to be true in his work Everything Bad is Good for You. Possibly the best thing about this book is how upfront Johnson is with his message. His aims at convincing his audience of a simple yet novel idea: popular culture has become more complex and mentally stimulating over the past thirty years. One of Johnson’s greatest strengths in his writing is how often he circulates to that point, making it certain his point shines throughout the book.
Johnson is treading thin ice with his statements about the “dumbed down” television and video games. The common immediate thought with American pop culture resembles an overweight adolescent staring at a television drooling with one hand on the remote and the other in his nose. Johnson intends to completely erase that misconception. As he puts it, “the popular media steadily, but almost imperceptibly, making our minds sharper, as we soak in entertainment usually dismissed as so much lowbrow fluff. ” (Johnson xiii) The intelligence of Johnson is polished through his evidence to said fact.
Grand Theft Auto, Halo, SIMS. What kinds of thoughts do said prevalent video games bring to mind? The general consensus about video games for over a decade is a negative one. An agreement that video games have a whole heartedly negative effect on a child’s maturing, intelligence, and overall well-being. Resident boundary pusher Steven Johnson has an utterly contradictory belief on idea. Utilizing reading books as the universal method for child development Johnson shows how it doesn’t accomplish as much as was previously thought, and how video games can fill that void.
The Essay on Addiction Lenny Johnson Video Game
There are Addiction Lenny Johnson There are many different types of addiction. When thinking about it, the first thing to pop into most people s minds is some sort of drug. The truth be told, addiction can invade just about any area of one s life. Take video games for example; for children, video games are a popular way to pass time, and on the surface, seem harmless. It is not unusual for a child ...
Proving his unbiased book, Johnson foreshadows his upcoming points by stating “I believe the printed word remains the most powerful vehicle for conveying complicated information. ” (Johnson 23) Moving forward he begins with books being more mentally stimulating than video games, this universal concept happens to be mistaken. Johnson starts by comparing video games and reading for the brain. “Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices. (Johnson 19) Said fact alone already brings a fresh perspective to the debate. Another large detail that is looked over is how we have been conditioned to believe that books are the optimum way to grow your mind. Johnson argues how we are born into this idea that books are the only way. To put this into perspective, Johnson creatively cites the first world famous media analyst, widely respected and studied Marshall McLuhan. The genius constructed an imaginary alternate universe where reading was introduced after video games. He highlights how parents and teachers would be appalled at this new “page bound texts”.
Johnson figures this world would sound something like this, “unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying—which engages the child in a vivid, three dimensional world… books are simply a barren string of words on a page…. Books force children to sequester him or herself to a quiet space, shutting off interaction with other children. ” (Johnson 19) Furthermore, he enlightens on how this world would force children to actually be less creative by “following a fixed linear path. ” (Johnson 20) Sitting back and having a story dictated to you doesn’t foster creativity, it compresses it.
Reading these novels will make the children feel powerless; especially considering the millions of adventures they embark on each day. Johnson worries that the children will “learn to follow instead of learn to lead” (Johnson 20) McLuhan’s alternate universe while imaginary makes it quite easy to see why his point of view is an easy one to comprehend. His justification for our preconditioned ideas on reading before video games is told as follows, “the presence of the recent past inevitability colors your vision of the emerging form, highlighting the flaws and imperfections” (qtd.
The Essay on Violent Video Games Children Behavior Aggressive
The use of violent video games is on the rise. Once, video games depicted harmless fun with friendly characters to play with. But now, the games have become more violent at an alarming rate. And with the rise in popularity of these types of games, children are playing these graphically violent games. Many people wonder if the violence in video games has lasting affects on users, children in ...
In Johnson 18) Basically, our opinions on video games are an unfortunate chronological mishap. However, the argument is not isolated to a purely general one. There is much more to say about content as well. Perhaps Johnson’s most powerful strong suit in Everything Bad is Good for You may be how straightforward he is about his ideas. He initiates his next argument by issuing a simple proclamation, “games are fiendishly, sometimes maddeningly, hard. ” (Johnson 25) Often overlooked, this fact illustrates a massive question; why do children and people of all ges play these tedious infuriating video games for countless hours and days? To answer this inquiry, Johnson alludes to Troy Stolle, an average American male who works for a construction company. When he isn’t working his day job, Stolle is living in the virtual world of Ultima Online. Similar to popular games Second Life and Sims, Ultima starts with an avatar that is created to resemble the player (or what the player wants to look as) that is entered into a virtual world of interaction and commerce.
Johnson calls upon a sequence of tasks that Stolle had to complete to purchase a new house in his virtual world. To purchase a new “home” he needed money. Acquiring money consisted of him selling his old house, then spent months crafting virtual swords and plate mail to sell to his peers. To build a good clientele he need a level of experience superior to most. This level, known as Grandmaster, required doing nothing but smithing. He had to mine ore, melt it to turn the weapons for armor, put it all together and do it all over again hundreds of times.
The excessive, tiresome, monotonous work just to buy a new fake house for his fake world brings back the question above. Why does Troy Stolle care so much about his virtual world? The answer is a complicated one. Johnson points out another fallacy about gaming. It is commonly said that games are played for so many hours because of the instant gratification they present that differs from real life, which fosters delayed gratification. If this is so, why do the thousands of people just like Troy Stolle spend hours in their virtual worlds just for one small incentive?
The Essay on Johnson Game Team Coach
'We are going to be 100 percent certain before we put him into a live basketball game, where you face a lot more risk than you do just getting yourself ready to play,' Suns president and general manager Bryan Col angelo said. Johnson was not at practice on Monday. Instead, he was seeing doctors and having more adjustments done on the protective mask designed for him to wear when he does return. ...
Johnson calls upon the research done by neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp who concluded that our brains have a dopamine center that craves and constantly seeks circuitry “propelling us to seek out new avenues for reward in our environment. ” (Johnson 35) The instinct results in a desire to explore, the idea that the reward will be found eventually, somewhere. With this idea in mind, and being conscious of our need to never be satisfied, Troy Stolle seems completely relatable. It turns out that the most lucrative games happen to be the most cognitively challenging (Johnson 28).
These games also all share one similarity, delayed gratification. The delayed gratification of these video games includes the most cognitively challenging medium today. Johnson states an interesting point about how video games have guidebooks. Millions have been sold for thousands of games. Do you see people walking into movies with guidebooks? Are there guidebooks on all the coffee tables in America, just in case if they need some assistance through a program? The answer is an obvious, almost comical no.
