Steven Johnson - Everything Bad is Good for You, 7 Jun 06

(Audio only) Steven Johnson, best selling author of Everything Bad Is Good For You, presents his thesis regarding the evolution of media and its ability to make us all smarter. Johnson covers changes in video games, the Internet, film, and television in his book and discusses some of his thinking in this keynote at the Association for Educational Publishing (AEP) Summit.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Steven
• Johnson
• video
• games
• kids
• media
• technology
• Civilization
• Civ
• Everything
• Bad
• Is
• Good
• For
• You
• AEP
• 360KID

[nitrambelac]

Thanks for posting this, I really enjoyed it, and I will read his book.

[straylor]

I think Steven Johnson's book is fantastic. It's required reading for people who work in learning games or serious games.

[croscream]

Clearly the difference is not about years, but about tradition: one tradition goes back longer, the other is still very young. Why for example: should the traditional Disney narrative not be classical, if pixer does or does not follow that narrative?

[croscream]

@woolf1991

Forget the first few fact and opinions you mention: Try to describe WHY Becket is more complex then Shore or the Lion King. Saying that it is complex is not enough, you have to convey by analysing the content and making connections why this is so.

For example, you said it is rediculous that Toy Story is much more complex then the Lion King, because there is only a years between the two films. But the two films fit within two different traditions: Disney and Pixel.

[woolf1991]

@croscream Johnson does not have much empirical data...IQ test and fuckin G score? Not to mention some of his data is flawed...ie calling The Lion King an "earlier film" (and implies thus less complex) than Toy Story. Lion king was made in 1994, Toy Story 95. He just doesnt seem to know why schools suck, and thus gives the wrong answer. To him, Jersey Shore is more compex than a Samuel BEcket play called waitinng for Godot, which is really hard to comprehend. (Godot has 4 charaters)

[croscream]

@woolf1991

That great, but nothing what you said is based on emperical facts, but are opinions, biased opinion feuled by emotions.

[woolf1991]

@woolf1991 the problem with school at all is that it teaches us to conform to the rules of the game...something Johnson doesnt seem to get. Furthermore, while shows like sopranos may have more characters and more connections between them, this is not to say that all past media was like Dragnet. Look at an obscure author named William Shakespeare. Or  a small text called the bible. those were pop culture, and they are pretty densly written. Vaccuum, vaccum, vaccuum. He even thinks IQ tests work

[woolf1991]

Stephen Johnson's book is narrow-minded and presumptuous. We learn complex tasks like sin city-how to "probe" and "telescope", which seem to model our schools or ore importantly our life. Second of all, since when is Sin City really that fucking complicated? It doesnt seem much harder than working an assembly line. We learn through the games how to conform to the rules of the game, just like we do with school. Johnson seems to want to make schools more fun-when that isnt that problem with school

[BarbaraKent]

Really enjoyed this but how I wish there had been video.